c 

//? 


fR 

SSI  3 


V.I 


THE  LETTERS  OF 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE 


POSTHUMOUS 
POEMS 

of 

ALGERNON  CHARLES 
SWINBURNE 

Edited  by  EDMUND  GOSSE,  C.B. 
and  THOMAS  JAMES  WISE 


Cloth,  8vo.    $1.50  net 

"Pretty  well  every  mode  of  Swin- 
burne's muse,  every  string  of  his 
lyre,  is  represented  in  this  volume 
— the  swaying  sonorous  metres,  the 
gorgeous  vesture,  the  familiar  reiter- 
ated imagery,  the  familiar  themes." 
— New  York  Times  Book  Review. 

John  Lane  Company       New  York 


The  Letters  of 

Algernon  Charles 

Swinburne 


Edited  by 

Edmund  Gosse,  C.B. 

and 

Thomas  James  Wise 


VotI 


NEW  YORK:   JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 

LONDON:   WILLIAM  HEINEMANN 
MCMXIX 


COPYRIGHT,  1919. 

BY  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.S.A. 


INTRODUCTION 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE  was  born  on 
the  5th  of  April  1834,  and  died  on  the  loth  April 
1909. 

Mr.  Heinemann,  having  acquired  the  copy- 
right on  the  entire  writings  of  Swinburne,  has  en- 
trusted to  us  the  task  of  making  a  first  collection 
of  the  poet's  letters.  The  Correspondence  of  an 
eminent  author  is  bound  to  be  given  to  the  public 
in  successive  stages,  and  in  the  last  resource  is  con- 
demned to  imperfection.  No  collection  of  the 
Complete  Letters  of  a  writer  is  likely  ever  to  be 
published.  Those  of  Cowper  and  of  Johnson 
have  occupied  the  closest  attention  of  the  learned 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years,  yet  additions  to 
them  are  for  ever  turning  up.  The  case  of 
Charles  Lamb,  that  enchanting  letter-writer,  is  in 
point.  Talfourd  produced  in  1837  a  slender  first 
collection,  which  was  presently  extended  by  him- 
self, and  then  successively  by  Fitzgerald,  by  Haz- 
litt,  and  by  Ainger,  nor  can  it  be  certain  that  even 
Mr.  Lucas's  edition  will  never  undergo  enlarge- 
ment. It  must  be  borne  in  mind  by  the  reader  of 
the  ensuing  volumes  that  we  make  no  pretence 

v 


INTRODUCTION 

of  presenting  the  "complete"  correspondence  of 
Swinburne,  of  which  much  must  at  present  remain 
unknown  even  to  ourselves.  We  are,  in  fact, 
aware  of  the  existence  of  more  than  one  group  of 
letters,  an  inspection  of  which  is  still  denied  to 
the  general  public. 

What  we  are  able  to  give  is,  however,  and  will 
probably  remain,  a  very  considerable  portion  of 
Swinburne's  Correspondence,  for  three  reasons: 
the  first,  that  no  one,  except  his  Mother,  appears 
to  have  kept  his  early  letters,  so  far  at  least  as  we 
have  hitherto  been  able  to  discover;  the  second, 
that  a  good  deal  of  what  must  have  been  very 
familiar  and  interesting  has,  as  we  have  learned 
on  inquiry,  been  destroyed;  the  third,  that  in 
comparison  with  most  recent  authors  of  great  emi- 
nence Swinburne  wrote  few  letters.  He  experi- 
enced, as  I  have  explained  elsewhere,  a  physical 
difficulty  in  the  exercise  of  penmanship,  and  yet 
even  during  the  closing  years  of  his  life  he  re- 
frained from  availing  himself  of  the  services  of  a 
secretary.  The  bare  idea  of  Swinburne's  using  a 
type-writing  machine  brings  a  smile  to  the  lips  of 
any  one  who  recollects  his  capitulation  at  the  ap- 
proach of  any  species  of  mechanism. 

The  whole  of  his  compositions,  transcripts  for 
the  press  as  well  as  drafts,  and  his  private  letters 
to  the  end,  are  holograph.  Yet  the  act  of  holding 
a  pen  was  cumbrous  to  him,  and  he  avoided  it  as 

vi 


INTRODUCTION 

often  as  he  could,  never,  or  scarcely  ever,  copying 
his  own  poems,  and  preferring  the  risk  of  losing 
his  MSS.  in  the  post  to  the  labour  of  making  a 
duplicate.  A  letter,  therefore,  represented  a  toil- 
some act  to  him,  and  it  was  one  which  he  did  not 
face  without  a  strong  impulsion. 

With  him  there  can  be  no  question  that  the 
strongest  impulsion  came  from  literature,  and 
mainly  from  poetical  literature.  It  is  therefore 
not  surprising  that  questions  of  metrical  technique 
and  of  the  history  of  verse  recur  incessantly  in 
Swinburne's  correspondence,  as  they  did  in  his 
conversation.  He  lived  in  a  perpetual  converse 
with  the  Muses,  and  ubi  Thesaurus  ibl  Cor,  as 
Coleridge  wished  his  own  epitaph  to  confess.  But 
the  treasure-heap  over  which  Swinburne's  heart 
loved  most  to  gloat  was  that  formed  by  the  almost 
innumerable  quarto  plays  of  the  Elizabethan  and 
Jacobean  period.  These  are  discussed  in  his  cor- 
respondence with  a  gusto  which  surpasses  anything 
which  Charles  Lamb  himself  could  show,  and 
which  reflects  the  obsession  of  his  everyday  talk, 
in  the  course  of  which  he  seldom  refrained  for  any 
length  of  time  from  an  allusion  to  Arden  of  Fever- 
sham  or  some  such  tragic  drama.  It  will  be  ob- 
served that  this  part  of  Swinburne's  correspon- 
dence has  a  surprising  unity  of  method.  The  eye 
of  the  illustrious  enthusiast  is  fixed  throughout 
upon  his  subject,  and  it  moves  away  to  no  other. 

vii 


INTRODUCTION 

It  might  have  been  thought  impossible  to  deal  with 
matters  so  technical  without  a  touch  of  pedantry, 
yet  here  is  nothing  that  smells  of  the  lamp.  We 
have  a  scholar  talking  to  some  other  scholar  of 
things  intimately  seductive  to  them  both,  and  he 
does  it  with  what  is  almost  the  ardour  of  a 
schoolboy. 

The  revelation  is  moral  as  well  as  intellectual, 
for  no  one  can  attentively  read  these  letters  with- 
out seeing  shine  out  of  them  the  courtesy,  the  gen- 
erosity, the  delicate  glow  of  friendship,  which 
were  characteristic  of  this  noble  poet.  Swin- 
burne's extraordinary  devotion  to  the  minor  drama- 
tists of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  dates 
from  his  schoolboy  days.  Once,  when  he  was 
looking  over  my  bookshelves,  he  took  down  a  copy 
of  Lamb's  Specimens  of  the  English  Dramatic 
Poets,  and,  turning  to  me,  said,  "that  book  taught 
me  more  than  any  other  in  the  world — that  and  the 
Bible!"  The  original  edition  (1808)  of  this  great 
work  does  not,  however,  present  the  extracts  from 
the  lesser  and  obscurer  dramatists.  When  Swin- 
burne writes,  in  one  of  the  ensuing  letters,  that 
Charles  Lamb  "made  Tottenham  Court  familiar 
to  me  ever  since  my  thirteenth  year,"  he  proves  that 
it  was  not  the  Specimens  in  their  original  form 
which  he  studied.  In  1827  Lamb  had  contributed 
to  Hone's  Table-Book  the  extracts  from  the  Gar- 
rick  Plays  which  were  Swinburne's  peculiar  de- 

viii 


INTRODUCTION 

light.  Here,  and  here  alone,  in  his  Eton  day, 
could  Nabbes,  Davenport,  Yarington,  Arden  of 
Feversham  and  Doctor  Dodypol  be  discovered. 
Hone's  Table-Book  was  an  ephemeral  affair,  and 
it  was  not  until  after  Lamb's  death  that,  in  1835, 
the  Garrick  Extracts  became  accessible  in  the 
pretty  edition  in  which  Moxon  appended  them  to 
his  reprint  of  the  Specimens. 

It  may  be  taken  for  granted  that  it  was  this  two- 
volume  edition  which  came  into  Swinburne's 
hands  in  his  thirteenth  year,  that  is  1849-50.  He 
induced  his  mother  to  buy  for  him  Dyce's  edition 
of  the  works  of  Marlowe  when  it  was  quite  a  new 
book;  and  this  was  published  in  1850.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  he  was  strictly  correct  when  he  at- 
tributed to  himself  a  love  and  some  budding 
knowledge  of  the  rarer  Elizabethans  at  the  ex- 
tremely precocious  age  of  thirteen.  In  order  to 
facilitate  the  reading  of  these  letters  to  those  who 
are  not  quite  so  conversant  with  the  small  spinosi- 
ties  of  Elizabethan  bibliography  as  were  the  poet 
and  his  correspondents,  we  have  occasionally  added 
a  few  brief  notes  at  the  foot  of  the  text. 

Swinburne's  correspondence  with  French  and 
Italian  contemporaries  must  have  been  consider- 
able, and  would  certainly  have  great  value  in  the 
comprehension  of  his  republican  poetry.  We  have 
made  great  efforts  to  trace  his  letters  to  Mazzini 
and  Victor  Hugo,  but  without  success.  We  do  not, 

ix 


INTRODUCTION 

however,  despair;  these  may  turn  up  when  they 
are  least  expected,  and  we  know  that  they  are  still 
being  searched  for.  They  may  reward  the  pa- 
tience of  some  deserving  editor  when  we  are  dead 
and  gone,  and  I  can  hardly  wish  him  a  greater 
piece  of  good  fortune,  since  I  am  convinced  that 
the  magnanimity  of  Swinburne  to  Hugo  inspired 
him  with  a  noble  eloquence,  and  that  he  poured 
out  to  Mazzini,  as  to  a  father  confessor,  the  very 
innermost  convictions  of  his  soul.  Of  his  foreign 
correspondence,  one  very  interesting  and  impor- 
tant section  will  be  found  here  in  the  letters  to 
Stephane  Mallarme.  The  daughter  of  that  poet, 
Madame  Bonniot,  generously  consented  to  search 
for  me  among  the  confusion  of  papers  at  Valvins, 
and  it  is  to  her  kindness  that  we  owe  the  letters 
written  by  Swinburne  to  Mallarme  in  1875  and 
1876.  It  will  not  be  overlooked  that  they  present 
valuable  evidence  of  the  English  poet's  competence 
in  the  use  of  the  French  language,  both  in  prose 
and  verse.  One  of  them,  as  will  be  seen,  was  modi- 
fied by  Mallarme  when  he  printed  it  in  La  Repub- 
llque  des  Lettres,  but  so  slightly  as  to  emphasize 
its  general  correctness.  All  are  given  here  exactly 
as  Swinburne  wrote  them.  The  letters  of  Mal- 
larme to  which  these  are  replies  have  disappeared, 
and  were  probably  destroyed.  But  even  if  they 
were  found,  they  could  not  be  published,  as  Mal- 
larme left  stringent  directions  that  no  letter  of  his, 


INTRODUCTION 

of  whatever  kind,  was  to  be  printed  after  his  death, 
and  this  wish  is  rigidly  confirmed  by  his  executors. 

The  tone  of  admiration  in  which  Swinburne 
writes  to  Mallarme  will  not  fail  to  attract  the 
reader's  attention.  It  is  remarkable,  because  in 
1875,  the  author  of  L'Apres-midi  d'un  Faune  was 
still  but  little  recognized  in  France,  and  his  very 
name  was  totally  unknown  in  England.  It  was 
the  English  poet's  warm  approval  of  the  French- 
man's translation  of  Poe  which  started  the  esteem. 
Swinburne  can,  at  that  time,  have  seen  very  little 
of  Mallarme's  original  work.  But  he  was  ac- 
quainted with  Le  Parnasse  Contemporain  of  1866, 
and  with  the  Second  Parnasse  of  1869;  each  of 
these  contained  lyrics  by  Mallarme  the  merit  of 
which  Swinburne,  with  his  rapid  and  faultless 
perception,  did  not  fail  to  recognize.  He  had 
seen  "Le  phenomene  futur,"  and  it  is  within  my 
personal  memory  that,  in  Le  Tombeau  de  Theo- 
phile  Gautier — a  book  in  which  Swinburne  took 
an  almost  feverish  interest — he  particularly  ob- 
served the  mysterious  merit  of  "Toast  Funebre." 

It  must  not,  however,  be  gathered  that  Swin- 
burne accepted,  or  comprehended,  the  obstinate 
and  intricate  theories  of  Mallarme  regarding 
poetic  art.  I  do  not  recollect,  in  later  years,  that 
he  occupied  himself  much,  or  at  all,  with  the  de- 
velopment of  Symbolism.  His  sentiment  towards 
Mallarme  was  one  of  delicate  and  courteous  sym- 

xi 


INTRODUCTION 

pathy  with  a  man  whom  he  felt  to  be  an  artist  to 
the  tips  of  his  fingers,  and  who  recommended  him- 
self to  him  through  the  friendship  of  Manet, 
Whistler,  and  Fantin,  the  enthusiasm  of  Theodore 
de  Banville  and  Catulle  Mendes,  and  the  imperial 
complaisance  of  Victor  Hugo. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  excused  a  word  of  explanation 
regarding  the  abrupt  change  of  tone  between  the 
first  and  the  second  of  those  ensuing  letters  which 
are  addressed  to  myself.  It  represents,  alas!  a  loss 
of  material  which  I  can  never  cease  to  deplore. 
When  I  wrote  to  Swinburne  in  1867  I  was  in  my 
eighteenth  year,  and  had  but  lately  left  school, 
while  he  was  in  his  thirty-first  year,  and  was  sur- 
rounded by  the  splendour  and  scandal  of  his  then 
recent  Poems  and  Ballads.  Remote  from  all  liter- 
ary society  and  supported  by  no  private  sympathy, 
I  was  living  a  feverish  and  absurd  existence,  in- 
fatuated with  poetry  and  with  the  desire  to  excel 
in  the  writing  of  verses;  torn  between  the  claims 
of  a  dying  puritanism  and  those  of  a  vaguely  in- 
vading paganism.  In  this  unhealthy  mood,  I  ven- 
tured to  send  some  of  my  painful  compositions  to 
the  poet  who  had  lately  flooded  our  horizon  with 
radiance.  It  was  the  first  time  that  I  inflicted 
such  an  indiscretion  on  a  stranger,  and  it  was  to 
be  the  last.  The  result  of  receiving  Swinburne's 
wise  and  straightforward  reply  was  that  I  burned 
all  that  I  had  written,  and  set  about  a  new  and 

xii 


INTRODUCTION 

more  sober  study  of  the  great  masters  of  our  liter- 
ature. 

But  it  was  not  until  three  years  later,  at  the  close 
of  1870,  that  I  made  the  poet's  personal  acquaint- 
ance, and  it  was  in  the  beginning  of  1871  that  we 
began  to  be  friends.  This  relation  ripened  into 
a  close  intimacy  at  the  opening  of  1873,  and  from 
that  time  forward  our  intercourse  was  frequent 
and  confidential.  I  saw  him  very  often  indeed, 
and  when  he  was  absent  from  London  we  wrote 
to  one  another.  There  was  a  bundle  of  letters, 
dating  from  1871  to  the  end  of  1873,  which  would 
naturally  have  contributed  passages  of  critical  in- 
terest and  biographical  importance  to  the  present 
collection,  but  unhappily  it  is  lost.  In  the  course 
of  a  change  of  lodgings  in  1874  a  desk  of  papers 
disappeared,  and  with  it  all  the  letters  which  I  had 
received  from  Swinburne  since  our  friendship  be- 
gan. This  is  the  reason  why,  after  the  stiffness  of 
an  opening  reply  to  an  unknown  aspirant,  the 
reader  is  plunged  into  the  midst  of  a  familiar 
friendship. 

The  extreme  simplicity  of  Swinburne's  nature 
is  revealed  in  all  his  personal  correspondence. 
Not  a  letter  here,  except  those  which  were  ad- 
dressed to  Edmund  C.  Stedman  with  a  definite 
purpose,  shows  any  consciousness  of  a  possible 
"general  public."  They  are  absolutely  unaffected 
responses  to  the  appeals  of  private  friends. 

xiii 


INTRODUCTION 

Scarcely  any  references  to  events  of  passing  history 
are  to  be  found  in  these  letters;  Swinburne  left 
these  to  the  newspapers,  he  was  absorbed  in  other 
matters.  It  is  said  that  Scaliger,  who  was  tran- 
scribing a  Hebrew  manuscript  in  the  heart  of 
Paris,  lived  through  the  day  of  St.  Bartholomew 
without  observing  that  anybody  was  being  massa- 
cred in  the  street  below  his  window.  A  similar 
story  records  that  Archimedes  could  not  be  drawn 
from  his  mathematical  reflections  by  the  noises  of 
the  sack  of  Syracuse.  Our  poet  was  capable  of 
an  abstracted  application  which  was  not  surpassed 
by  either  of  these  historical  instances. 

Our  sincere  thanks  are  due  to  all  those  many 
friends  who  have  courteously  permitted  us  to 
transcribe  the  letters  in  their  possession.  Among 
them  a  foremost  place  is  due  to  Lord  Morley,  who 
has  been  so  gracious  as  to  offer  me  access  to  the 
whole  of  such  letters  from  the  poet  as  he  had  pre- 
served, and  to  give  me  his  counsel  in  my  selection 
from  them.  Our  thanks  for  special  help  from  the 
Marquess  of  Crewe,  and  from  Sir  George  Otto 
Trevelyan,  which  I  have  already  acknowledged  in 
my  Life  of  Swinburne,  we  take  this  opportunity 
of  gratefully  repeating. 

EDMUND  GOSSE. 


XIV 


LETTER  I 
To  EDWIN  HATCH  1 

Oxford. 
February  17 th,  [1858]. 

MY  DEAR  HATCH, 

I  commiserate  you  sincerely;  but  I  have 
two  things  to  comfort  you  with: — (i)  Morris's 
book  is  really  out.  Reading  it,  I  would  fain  be 
worthy  to  sit  down  at  his  feet;  but  I  have  a  painful 
recollection  of  Aurora  Leigh: 

Almost  all  the  birds 

Will  sing  at  dawn;  and  yet  we  do  not  take 
The  chattering  swallow  for  the  holy  lark! 

Such,  however,  is  the  invincible  absurdity  of 
all  poets,  that  he  ventured  to  prefer  Rosamond  2 
to  Peter  Harpdon  3  in  a  repeatedly  rebuked  and 
resolutely  argued  statement.  It  appears  to  me 
simple  mania;  but  certainly  I  am  glad  of  his 

1  Edwin    Hatch    (1835-1889),    afterwards   a   distinguished 
theologian,  had  just  been  appointed  to  an  East  End  curacy. 

2  Rosamond,  the  second  of  the  two  dramas  in  Swinburne's 
volume  of  1860. 

8  Sir  Peter  Hatpdon's  End,  by  William  Morris.  Printed  in 
The  Defence  of  Guenevere  and  Other  Poems,  1858,  pp.  65-109. 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

words,  for  Rosamond  is  about  my  favourite  poem, 
and  is  now  verging  on  a  satisfactory  completion. 
The  first  scene  as  rewritten  is  an  acknowledged 
improvement.  But  after  all ! 

(2)!  have  a  message  to  you  from  Edith,1  which 
I  enclose  in  her  own  words.  Of  course  if  you  like 
I  will  write  for  your  book,  and  she  can  get  another 
copy;  you  must  not  let  her  interfere  between  you 
and  what  you  value.  She  would  be  in  a  great 
state  of  mind  at  the  idea. 

Now  (to  have  done  with  the  practical  at  once) 
could  you  tell  me  if  about  Easter  I  could  find  a 
day's  lodging  near  you  if  I  came  up?  I  should 
love  to  see  all  you  speak  of,  and  also  to  talk 
with  you  sooner  than  otherwise.  This  is  a  vague 
vision,  and  certainly  cool  on  my  part  to  give  you 
the  trouble;  but  we  might  make  something  of  it. 

In  redemption  of  my  words,  I  enclose  two  of 
my  latest  grinds,  regardless  of  postage.  Lose  not 
the  priceless  uniques  lest  the  world  demand  the  ac- 
count thereof  at  your  hands.  The  Golden  House 
is  of  course  Rudel  in  Paradise.  The  other  I  can 
only  describe  as  a  dramato-lyrico-phantas-magor- 
ico-spasmodic  sermon  on  the  grievous  sin  of  flirta- 
tion. It  was  written  off  one  evening  and  has  never 
been  corrected.  Verdicts  differ  concerning  it. 
Morris  attacks  it  as  weak  and  spasmodic.  Nichol 

1  Miss  Edith  Burden,  sister  of  Miss  Jane  Burden;  she  after- 
wards became  Mrs.  William  Morris. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

(in  whose  opinion  I  often  trust)  thinks  it  rather 
a  good  dramatic  story  than  otherwise.  It  is  of 
course  meant  for  a  picture  of  exceptional  weak- 
ness; inaction  of  the  man,  impulsive  irresolution 
of  the  woman;  mutual  ignorance  of  each  other 
and  themselves,  with  an  extra  dash  of  sensuous 
impulse;  finally  with  no  ostensible  cause,  rupture 
and  spiflication.  Pray  abuse  it  if  you  feel  in- 
clined; I  am  not  (as  you  know)  over-delicate  and 
timid  concerning  my  scribbles,  and  I  have  no  ten- 
derness for  this;  and  if  it  is  not  what  it  ought  to 
be,  it  is  a  decided  failure.  But  I  suspect  I  must  be 
Eglamor  to  Morris  as  Sordello. 

I  long  to  be  with  you  by  firelight  between  the 
sunset  and  the  sea  to  have  talk  of  Sordello;  it  is 
one  of  my  canonical  scriptures.  Does  he  sleep  and 
forget?  I  think  yes.  Did  the  first  time  Palma's 
mouth  trembled  to  touch  his  in  the  golden  rose- 
lands  of  Paradise,  a  sudden  power  of  angelic  ac- 
tion come  over  him?  I  suspect,  not  utterly  com- 
panionless.  Sometimes  one  knows — not  now:  but 
I  suppose  he  slept  years  off  before  she  kissed  him. 
In  Heaven  she  grew  too  tired  and  thin  to  sing 
well,  and  her  face  grew  whiter  than  its  aureole 
with  pain  and  want  of  him.  And  if,  like  the  other 
Saint,  she  wept,  the  tears  fell  upon  his  shut  lids 
and  fretted  the  eyes  apart  as  they  trickled.  Who 
knows  these  matters?  Only  we  keep  the  honey- 
stain  of  hair. 

3 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  write  more  folly  to  you  than  I  dare  read  over, 
because  I  think  you  wise.  So  take  my  stupidity  as 
a  compliment.  If  you  like,  and  if  it  prospers,  I 
will  send  you  specimens  of  a  new  poem  on  Tris- 
tram which  I  am  about.  I  envy  you  your  work  of 
corrupting  the  young  idea  with  Shelley.  I  hope 
you  will  also  introduce  Morris — the  first  edition 
must  pay  well.  If  you  like  or  care  to  amuse  your- 
self therewith,  my  poems  are  at  your  service.  I 
don't  care  about  privacy.  I  shudder  at  the  idea 
of  a  young  man  in  the  sixth  form  being  tainted  by 
such  reading  as  Shelley,  Morris,  and  the  unworthi- 
est  of  their  admirers.  I  should  like  to  review  my- 
self and  say  "that  I  have  an  abortive  covetousness 
of  imitation  in  which  an  exaggeration  of  my  mod- 
els— i.  e.  blasphemy  and  sensuality — is  happily 
neutralised  by  my  own  imbecility."  I  flatter  my- 
self the  last  sentence  was  worthy  of  the  Saturday 
Review.  I  also  envy  your  musical  and  architec- 
tural work.  Upon  the  whole,  if  your  pupils  in 
poetry  and  profanity  are  conversible,  I  think  that 
one  might  be  worse  off  than  you.  I  am  sure,  but 
for  Morris,  I  should  be. 

One  evening — when  the  Union  was  just  finished 
-Jones  and  I  had  a  great  talk.  [Spencer]  Stan- 
hope and  Swan  attacked,  and  we  defended,  our 
idea  of  Heaven,  viz.  a  rose-garden  full  of  stunners. 
Atrocities  of  an  appalling  nature  were  uttered  on 
the  other  side.  We  became  so  fierce  that  two  re- 

4 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

spectable  members  of  the  University — entering  to 
see  the  pictures — stood  mute  and  looked  at  us. 
We  spoke  just  then  of  kisses  in  Paradise,  and  ex- 
pounded our  ideas  on  the  celestial  development  of 
that  necessity  of  life;  and  after  listening  five  min- 
utes to  our  language,  they  literally  fled  from  the 
room!  Conceive  our  mutual  ecstasy  of  delight, 

All  my  people  desire  to  be  remembered  to  you. 
I  had  a  long  letter  from  Edith  the  other  day:  I 
know  you  will  be  glad  to  hear  this,  as  I  am  to  think 
of  Morris's  having  that  wonderful  and  most  per- 
fect stunner  of  his  to — look  at  or  speak  to.  The 
idea  of  his  marrying  her  is  insane.  To  kiss  her 
feet  is  the  utmost  man  should  dream  of  doing. 

Mind  you  send  for  his  book  at  once;  read  it,  and 
repent  your  former  heresies,  or  I  will  review  it 
somewhere  and  say  that  he  is  to  Tennyson  what 
Tennyson  is  to  Dobell  or  Dobell  to  Tupper. 
Believe  me,  ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.  S. — Morris  sends  his  love  to  you  and  hopes 
you  are  getting  settled.  The  Alblgenses  are  not  yet 
organised;  I  must  read  more,  and  then  dash  at  it 
in  wrath 


LETTER  II 
To  EDWIN  HATCH 

Oxford. 
April  26th,  [1858]. 

MY  DEAR  HATCH, 

I  am  very  sorry  to  have  missed  seeing 
you,  before  you  left  us  for  the  improving  recrea- 
tion of  canes  and  chemistry,  Gregorians  and  casti- 
gation.  I  trust  you  will  some  day  have  had  enough, 
and  set  up  the  staff  of  your  tent  even  among  Phil- 
,  istines  to  whom  the  penetralia  of  Chambers'*  Mag- 
agzlne  are  unknown  land. 

Have  you  yet  seen  Montegut's  article  on  Kings- 
ley  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes?  Get  it  up 
when  you  have  time,  it  is  well  worth  while. 

Item:  a  review  of  Guenevere  in  The  Tablet — 
I  believe  by  Pollen,  certainly  the  best  as  well  as 
most  favourable  review  Morris  has  had.  That 
party  has  given  us  no  signs  of  life  as  yet;  in  vain 
has  the  Oxford  County  Chronicle  been  crammed 
with  such  notices  as  the  following: 

"If  W.  M.  will  return  to  his  disconsolate  friends, 
all  shall  be  forgiven.  One  word  would  relieve 
them  from  the  most  agonising  anxiety — why  is  it 
withheld?" 

"If  the  Gentleman  who  left  an  MS.   (appar- 

6 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

ently  in  verse)  in  George  St.  will  communicate 
with  his  bereaved  and  despairing  Publishers,  he 
will  hear  of  something  to  his  advantage.  Other- 
wise the  MS.  will  be  sold  (to  pay  expenses)  as 
waste  paper,  together  with  the  stock  in  hand  of 
a  late  volume  of  Poems  which  fell  stillborn  from 
the  press." 

Even  this  latter — a  touching  effusion  of  the  cre- 
ative fancy  and  talented  pen  "which  now  traces 
these  imperfect  records  with  a  faltering  hand" — 
has  failed  to  move  him.  The  towncrier  is  to  pro- 
claim our  loss  to-morrow:  "Lost,  stolen,  or 
strayed,  an  eminent  artist  and  promising  littera- 
teur. (The  description  of  his  person  is  omitted  for 
obvious  reasons.)  Had  on  when  he  was  last  seen 
the  clothes  of  another  gentleman,  much  worn,  of 
which  he  had  possessed  himself  in  a  fit  of  moral — 
and  physical — abstraction.  Linen  (questionable) 
marked  W.  M.  Swears  awfully,  and  walks  with  a 
rolling  gait,  as  if  partially  intoxicated." 

Enough  of  so  painful  a  subject.  I  hope  you  are 
not  breaking  your  brains  upon  Sordello.  Read  the 
other  poets  now  alive  (whom  it  would  be  invidious 
to  particularise  too  minutely)  and  you  will  out- 
grow your  absurd  veneration  for  "an  author  of 
some  talent,  but  more  extravagance" — vide  Satur- 
day Review,  Art.  Men  and  Women. 

I  shall  be  busy  till  Whitsuntide,  so  this  elegant 
epistle  is  my  last  for  some  time. 

7 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Receive  the  assurance  of  my  respectful  consid- 
eration, and  believe  me 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  III 
To  RICHARD  MONCKTON  MILNES 

(Afterwards  Lord  Houghton) 

1 6,  Graf  ton  Street, 

Fitzroy  Square, 

October  i$th,  1860. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  MILNES, 

I  send  you  to-morrow,  as  you  wished, 
my  article  on  Wells's  Joseph  and  his  Brethren, 
which  has  been  some  time  doing,  but  I  wanted 
to  make  it  as  satisfactory  as  I  could  without  tran- 
scribing half  the  book.  It  is  still  finer,  I  think, 
than  it  seemed  in  my  recollection  of  it  after  the 
first  reading,  and  I  should  be  very  glad  if  I  had 
anything  to  do  with  helping  it  to  a  little  of  the 
credit  it  must  gain  in  the  end.  I  have  consulted 
with  Rossetti  about  the  choice  of  extracts.  How 
on  earth  a  copy  could  now  be  got,  I  can't  think. 
I  was  driven  to  the  dolorous  expedient  of  hunting 
up  the  British  Museum  copy  (entered  in  the  wild- 
est way  in  that  slough  of  a  catalogue)  so  as  to  col- 

8 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

late  it  with  a  MS.  copy  sent  to  Rossetti  by  the 
author. 

I  ought  to  have  thanked  you  before  both  for  my 
parcel  which  came  on  safely  to  me  at  the  Trevel- 
yans',  and  for  the  invitation  you  sent  me  from 
Lady  de  Grey;  I  had  a  very  nice  week  with  them. 

Since  I  came  back  to  London  about  a  fortnight 
since,  I  have  done  some  more  work  to  Chastelard, 
and  rubbed  up  one  or  two  other  things.  My  friend 
George  Meredith  has  asked  me  to  send  some  to 
Once  a  Week,  which  valuable  publication  he  props 
up  occasionally  with  fragments  of  his  own.  Ros- 
setti has  just  done  a  drawing  of  a  female  model 
and  myself  embracing — I  need  not  say  in  the  most 
fervent  and  abandoned  style — meant  for  a  frontis- 
piece to  his  Italian  Translations.1  Everybody  who 
knows  me  already  salutes  the  likeness  with  a  yell 
of  recognition.  When  the  book  comes  out,  I  shall 
have  no  refuge  but  the  grave. 

I  would  also  have  kept  another  promise,  and 
send  you  my  De  la  Touche,  but  until  I  know  it 
will  go  straight  to  your  hands  I  dare  not  trust 
La  Reine  d'Espagne  out  of  my  sight.  Reserving 
always  your  corresponding  promise  that  I  am  yet 
to  live  and  look  upon  the  mystic  pages  of  the  mar- 
tyred Marquis  de  Sade,  ever  since  which  the  vision 

1  The  Early  Italian  Poets,  Translated  by  D.  G.  Rossetti.  8vo, 
1 86 1.  The  "drawing"  in  question,  though  duly  engraved  upon 
wood,  was  not  ultimately  employed  for  the  purpose  for  which 
it  had  been  prepared. 

9 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

of  that  illustrious  and  ill-requited  benefactor  of 
humanity  has  hovered  by  night  before  my  eyes- 
With  best  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Milnes, 
I  remain,  yours  most  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  IV 
To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 

Maison  Laurenti, 
Mentone. 

January  iqth,  [1861]. 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

(Which  a  nice  place  it  is  to  date  from!) 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter,  which  a 
comfortable  letter  it  was,  but  creates  violent  wishes 
to  get  back  to  England.  For  of  all  the  beasts  of 
countries  I  ever  see,  I  reckon  this  about  caps  them. 
I  also  strongly  notion  that  there  ain't  a  hole  in 
St.  Giles's  which  isn't  a  paradise  to  this.  How 
any  professing  Christian  as  has  been  in  France  and 
England  can  look  at  it,  passes  me.  It  is  more  like 
the  landscape  in  Browning's  Childe  Roland  than 
anything  I  ever  heard  tell  on.  A  calcined,  scalped, 
rasped,  scraped,  flayed,  broiled,  powdered,  leprous, 
blotched,  mangy,  grimy,  parboiled  country  'with- 
out trees,  water,  grass,  fields — with  blank,  beastly, 

10 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

senseless  olives  and  orange-trees  like  a  mad  cab- 
bage gone  indigestible;  it  is  infinitely  liker  hell 
than  earth,  and  one  looks  for  tails  among  the  peo- 
ple. And  such  females  with  hunched  bodies  and 
crooked  necks  carrying  tons  on  their  heads,  and 
looking  like  Death  taken  seasick.  Ar-r-r-r-r! 
Gr-r-r-rnl 

Wai,  I  feel  kind  of  better  after  that.  But  the 
aggravation  of  having  people  about  one  who  un- 
dertake to  admire  these  big  stone-heaps  of  hills 
and  hideous  split-jawed  gorges!  I  must  say  (in 
Carlylese)  that  "the  (scenery)  is  of  the  sort  which 
must  be  called,  not  in  the  way  of  profane  swearing, 
but  of  grave,  earnest  and  sorrowing  indignation, 

the  d sort."  (I  wd.  rather  die  than  write  it  at 

length). 

I  am  very  glad  you  like  my  book 1 ;  if  it  will 
do  anything  like  sell  I  shall  publish  my  shorter 
poems  soon.  They  are  quite  ready.  I  have  done 
a  lot  of  work  since  I  saw  you.  Rossetti  says  some 
of  my  best  pieces:  one  on  St.  Dorothy  and  Theo- 
philus  (I  wanted  to  try  my  heathen  hands  at  a 
Christian  subject,  you  comprehend,  and  give  a 
pat  to  the  Papist  interest)  ;  also  a  long  one  out  of 
Boccaccio,  that  was  begun  ages  ago  and  let  drop. 
Item  many  songs  and  ballads.  I  am  trying  to  write 
prose,  which  is  very  hard,  but  I  want  to  make  a 
few  stories  each  about  three  or  six  pages  long. 

1  The  Queen-Mother  and  Rosamund,  1860. 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Likewise  a  big  one  about  my  blessedest  pet  which 
her  initials  is  Lucrezia  Estense  Borgia.  Which 
soon  I  hope  to  see  her  hair  as  is  kep  at  Milan  "in 
spirits  in  a  bottle." 

Which  puts  me  in  mind  of  a  favour  I  want  to 
ask  you.  In  the  beginning  (probably)  of  Feb.  I 
am  going  to  Venice  and  through  all  the  chief  towns 
I  can,  and  perhaps  to  Florence  if  I  could  find  out 
whether  Mr.  Browning  is  there.  Now  there  is 
nobody  within  reach  who  knows  as  much  of  art 
as  a  decently  educated  cockroach;  and  I  want  you 
to  have  the  extreme  goodness  to  tell  me  what  to 
go  to  and  how  to  see  Venice — buildings  especially 
as  well  as  pictures — before  it  gets  bombarded— 
out  of  the  British  tourist's  fashion.  If  you  are  not 
awfully  busy  wd  you  write  me  a  letter  wh:  I  cd 
get  say  by  the  week  after  next?  considering  I  have 
read  no  books  and  am  not  content  with  the  British 
Murray. 

I  wish  I  had  anything  to  do  besides  my  proper 
work  if  I  can't  live  by  it.  Which  it's  very  well 
to  pitch  into  a  party  like  brother  Stockdolloger, 
but  what  is  one  to  do?  I  can't  go  to  the  bar:  and 
much  good  I  shd  do  if  I  did.  You  know  there  is 
really  no  profession  one  can  take  up  with  and  go 
on  working.  Item — poetry  is  quite  work  enough 
for  any  one  man.  Item — who  is  there  that  is  any- 
thing besides  a  poet  at  this  day  except  Hugo?  And 
though  his  politics  is  excellent  and  his  opinions  is 

12 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

sound,  he  does  much  better  when  he  sticks  to  his 
work  and  makes  Ratbert  and  Ruy  Bias.  I  don't 
want  to  sit  in  [a]  room  and  write,  gracious  knows. 
Do  you  think  a  small  thing  in  the  stump-orator 
line  wd  do?  or  a  Grace-Walker?  Seriously  what 
is  there  you  wd  have  one  take  to?  It's  a  very 
good  lecture  but  it  is  not  practical.  Nor  yet  it 
ain't  fair.  It's  bage. 

Have  you  heard  the  report  that  old  Landor  is 
going  to  republish  all  his  suppressed  libels  in  verse 
and  prose  and  more  new  ones?  Isn't  he  a  marvel 
of  heaven's  making?  I  suppose  a  British  public 
will  bust  at  once  if  it's  nipped  and  frizzled  and 
churned  up  to  an  etarnal  smash  any  more:  which 
by  the  by  America  seems  to  be  at  this  writing. 

I  am  in  love  with  Paris — you  know  I  never  saw 
it  before.  What  a  stunner  above  stunners  that 
Giorgione  party  with  the  music  in  the  grass  and 
the  water-drawer  is,  that  Gabriel  made  such  a  son- 
net on.  Then  that  Stephen  preaching  of  Car- 
paccio!  I  never  heard  a  word  of  it;  but  it  seems 
to  me  lovely,  with  wonders  of  faces.  Item  the 
Velasquez.  Item  things  in  general.  Item  the  lit- 
tle Uccello  up  at  the  top  of  the  gallery. 

My  parents  should  no  doubt  send  all  proper 
messages,  but  are  probably  in  bed  and  (let  us 
hope)  enjoying  a  deep  repose.  For  the  hour  is 
midnight.  On  this  account  I  will  now  conclude 

13 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

with  my  duty  and  respects  to  Sir  Walter;  and  am 
with  a  filial  heart, 

AL.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

I  wish  to  goodness  you  would  send  me  out  some 
eligible  companions.  I  shall  have  to  go  alone  to 
Turin.  For  the  English  here  are  mainly  false 
friends.  Don't  you  think  we  shall  yet  live  to  see 
the  last  Austrian  emperor  hung?  Is  Garibaldi  the 
greatest  man  since  Adam,  or  is  he  not? 


LETTER  V 

To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 

Fryston  Hall, 

Ferrybridge,  Yorkshire. 
December  2nd,   1862. 

(Anniversary  of  the  Treason  of  L.  Buonaparte) 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

I  am  leaving  here  next  Monday  and 
want  to  know  if  you  could  have  me  then  as  you 
was  so  kyind  as  ax.  Gabriel  Rossetti  is  or  will  be 
at  Scotus',  so  that  haven  is  presumably  barred. 
William  Rossetti  is  here  and  desires  to  be  remem- 
bered to  you.  I  have  Quaggified  an  eminent  Sat- 
urday Reviewer  who  had  before  seen  no  merit  in 
the  great  Sala,  but  is  now  effectually  converted 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

to  The  Grace-Walking  religion,  wh.  hitherto  lie 
allays  licked.  I  have  to  run  down  to  Sussex  this 
week  to  attend  my  grandmother's  funeral J ;  but  am 
coming  back  here  for  a  day  or  two  at  the  end  of 
the  week  to  meet  other  eminent  men.  So  this 
is  my  direction  till  Monday.  Please  let  me  know 
if  I  am  to  turn  up. 

With  my  respectful  duty  to  all  friends,  notam- 
ment  to  Sir  Walter  and  to  Miss  LofTt.  I  remain, 
ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  VI 

To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 


Hotel, 

Newcastle. 
Monday  [December  1862], 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

I  hope  you  are  prepared  for  one  thing, 
the  natural  consequence  of  your  unnatural  con- 
duct; viz.  to  come  and  bail  me  out  when  the  hated 
minions  of  oppressive  law  have  haled  me  to  a 
loathsome  dungeon  for  inability  to  pay  a  fort- 
night's unlooked-for  hotel  expenses.  Nothing  on 
earth  is  likelier;  and  all  because  I  relied  with  filial 

1  Charlotte,  Countess  of  Ashburnham,  died  Nov.  26,  1862. 

15 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

shortsightedness  on  that  rather  fallacious  letter  of 
invitation  which  carried  me  off  from  Fryston.  If 
I  had  but  heard  in  time,  I  should  have  run  down 
to  London,  and  come  up  later.  As  it  is  I  see  Desti- 
tution and  Despair  ahead  of  me,  and  have  begun 
an  epitaph  in  the  Micawber  style  for  my  future 
grave  in  the  precincts  of  my  native  County's  jail. 
If  by  any  wild  chance — say  by  offering  the  head 
waiter  a  post-obit,  or  a  foreclosure,  or  a  mortgage, 
or  a  bill  payable  at  three  months,  or  a  Federal 
bond,  or  an  African  loan,  or  a  voucher,  or  some- 
thing equally  practicable — I  can  stave  off  the  pe- 
riod of  my  incarceration  so  as  to  get  to  Wallington 
on  Wednesday,  I  shall  take  the  train  that  leaves 
Morpeth  at  2.15  and  gets  to  Scotus's  Gap  *  at  2.50. 
But  I  cannot  disguise  for  myself,  and  will  not  for 
you,  that  this  contingency  is  most  remote.  It  is 
far  more  probable  that  posterity  will  appear,  a 
weeping  pilgrim,  in  the  prison-yard  of  this  city, 
to  drop  the  tear  of  indignant  sympathy  on  a  hum- 
ble stone  affording  scanty  and  dishonourable  refuge 

To 
The 

Nameless 

Dust 
of 
A.  C.  S. 

1  Scott's  Gap  is  the  name  of  the  station  which  serves  Wall- 
ington. 

16 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  VII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Albergo  della  Gran  Bretayna, 

March  4th,  [1864]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  meant  to  write  you  a  word  two  days 
since,  and  a  sufficiently  dolorous  epistle  you  would 
have  had,  but  luckily  an  equivocal  and  occasional- 
ly beneficent  Providence  intervened.  With  much 
labour  I  hunted  out  the  most  ancient  of  the  demi- 
gods [Landor]  at  93  Via  della  Chiesa,  but  (al- 
though knock-down  blows  were  not,  as  you  antici- 
pated, his  mode  of  salutation)  I  found  him,  owing 
I  suspect  to  the  violent  weather,  too  much  weak- 
ened and  confused  to  realise  the  fact  of  the  intro- 
duction without  distress.  In  effect,  he  seemed  so 
feeble  and  incompatible  that  I  came  away  in  a 
grievous  state  of  disappointment  and  depression 
myself,  fearing  I  was  really  too  late.  But  taking 
heart  of  grace  I  wrote  him  a  line  of  apology  and 
explanation,  saying  why  and  how  I  had  made  up 
my  mind  to  call  upon  him  after  you  had  furnished 
me  with  an  introduction.  That  is,  expressing  (as 
far  as  was  expressible)  my  immense  admiration 
and  reverence  in  the  plainest  and  sincerest  way  I 
could  manage.  To  which  missive  of  mine  came  a 

17 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

note  of  invitation  which  I  answered  by  setting 
off  again  for  his  lodging.  After  losing  myself  for 
an  hour  in  the  Borgo  S.  Frediano  I  found  it  at 
last,  and  found  him  as  alert,  brilliant,  and  alto- 
gether delicious  as  I  suppose  others  may  have 
found  him  twenty  years  since.  I  cannot  thank  you 
enough  for  procuring  me  this  great  pleasure  and 
exquisite  satisfaction.  I  am  seriously  more  obliged 
for  this  than  for  anything  that  could  have  been 
done  for  me.  I  have  got  the  one  thing  I  wanted 
with  all  my  heart.  If  both  or  either  of  us  die  to- 
morrow, at  least  to-day  he  has  told  me  that  my 
presence  here  has  made  him  happy;  he  said  more 
than  that — things  for  which  of  course  I  take  no 
credit  to  myself  but  which  are  not  the  less  pleas- 
ant to  hear  from  such  a  man.  There  is  no  other 
man  living  from  whom  I  should  so  much  have 
prized  any  expression  of  acceptance  or  goodwill 
in  return  for  my  homage,  for  all  other  men  as 
great  are  so  much  younger,  that  in  his  case  one 
sort  of  reverence  serves  as  the  lining  for  another. 
My  grandfather  was  upon  the  whole  mieux  con- 
serve, but  he  had  written  no  Hellenics.  In  answer 
to  something  that  Mr.  Landor  said  to-day  of  his 
own  age,  I  reminded  him  of  his  equals  and  prede- 
cessors, Sophocles  and  Titian;  he  said  he  should 
not  live  up  to  the  age  of  Sophocles — not  see  ninety. 
I  don't  see  why  he  shouldn't,  if  he  has  people  about 
him  to  care  for  him  as  he  should  be  cared  for. 

18 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

I  should  like  to  throw  up  all  other  things  on  earth 
and  devote  myself  to  playing  valet  to  him  for  the 
rest  of  his  days.  I  would  black  his  boots  if  he 
were  chez  moi.  He  has  given  me  the  shock  of 
adoration  which  one  feels  at  thirteen  towards  great 
men.  I  am  not  sure  that  any  other  emotion  is  so 
endurable  and  persistently  delicious  as  that  of  wor- 
ship, when  your  god  is  indubitable  and  incarnate 
before  your  eyes. 

I  told  him,  as  we  were  talking  of  poems  and 
such  things,  that  his  poems  had  first  given  me  in- 
explicable pleasure  and  a  sort  of  blind  relief  when 
I  was  a  small  fellow  of  twelve.  My  first  recollec- 
tion of  them  is  The  Song  of  Hours  in  the  Iphigenia. 
Apart  from  their  executive  perfection,  all  thos« 
Greek  poems  of  his  always  fitted  on  to  my  own 
way  of  feeling  and  thought  infinitely  more  than 
even  Tennyson's  modern  versions  do  now.  I  am 
more  than  ever  sure  that  the  Hamadryad  is  a  purer 
and  better  piece  of  work,  from  the  highest  point  of 
view  that  art  can  take,  than  such  magnificent  hash- 
es and  stews  of  old  and  new  with  a  sharp  sauce  of 
personality  as  CEnone  and  Ulysses.  Not  that  I  am 
disloyal  to  Tennyson,  into  whose  church  we  were 
all  in  my  time  born  and  baptized  as  far  back  as 
we  can  remember  at  all.  But  he  is  not  a  Greek 
nor  a  heathen,  and  I  imagine  does  not  want  to  be. 
I  greatly  fear  he  believes  it  possible  to  be  some- 
thing better;  an  absurdity  which  should  be  left  to 

19 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

the  Brownings  and  other  blatant  creatures  begotten 
on  the  slime  of  the  modern  chaos. 

If  I  let  myself  loose  I  shall  go  on  giving  you 
indirect  thanks  for  bringing  me  acquainted  with 
Landor,  till  time  and  paper  fail  me,  and  patience 
fails  you.  Even  if  I  did  so,  I  could  hardly  tell 
you  what  pleasures  I  have  had  to-day  in  a  half- 
hour's  intercourse  with  him:  nor  what  delicious 
things  he  said  in  recognition  of  my  half-expressed 
gratitude  to  him.  It  is  comfortable  when  one  does 
once  in  a  way  go  in  for  a  complete  quiet  bit  of 
hero-worship,  and  an  honest  interlude  of  relief 
to  find  it  taken  up  instead  of  thrown  away.  And 
the  chance  of  this  I  owe  to  you;  and  you  must 
simply  take  my  thanks  for  granted.  It  is  better 
than  a  publisher  to  me ;  what  more  can  a  rimailleur 
inedit  possibly  say? 

I  begin  to  remember  that  there  are  other  things 
on  the  earth  within  the  sphere  of  correspondence; 
and  that  I  ought  to  tell  you  how  pleasant  my  one 
day's  stay  at  Genoa  was  made  by  the  note  you  gave 
me  for  Miss  W.  The  other  sister  not  only  received 
me  in  that  strange  land  with  all  kindness,  but  also 
put  me  in  the  way  of  doing  what  was  to  be  done 
in  the  way  of  pictures — the  one  good  office  I  su- 
premely appreciate  in  an  unknown  city.  I  have 
just  now  come  in  from  dining  with  Mr.  Leader, 
and  write  this  before  going  to  bed.  He  (the  last- 
named)  is  going  to  call  for  me  to-morrow  and 

20 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

show  me  some  chapel  or  other  full  of  frescoes  by 
Gozzoli.  So  you  see  if  I  begin  to  indulge  in  the 
deleterious  virtue  of  gratitude  there  will  be  no  end 
to  my  letter.  Happily,  when  most  overburdened 
with  direct  or  indirect  benefits,  I  remember  the 
precept  of  a  great  and  good  man:  "La  recon- 
naissance est  une  chimere  vraiment  meprisable. 
Toutes  les  formes  de  la  vertu  sont  pour  le  veritable 
philosophe  des  execrations  digne  de  la  potence  de 
la  roue;  mats  celle-ci—  —!"  As  to  the  pictures 
here,  I  will  add  but  one  word:  Paolo  Veronese's 
"Martyrdom  of  St.  Justine"  seems  to  me  painfully 
and  ludicrously  inadequate. 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  VIII 
To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

124,  Mount  Street, 

August  6th,  [1864]. 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

If  I  had  not  been  a  day  or  two  out  of 
town  you  would  have  got  this  note  of  thanks  a 
day  or  two  sooner.  I  need  not  say  how  much  I 
value  Lander's  pamphlet.  I  only  wish  it  could 
have  been  then,  or  could  be  now,  so  circulated  as 

21 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

to  be  of  some  general  and  practical  use.  To  me  it 
is  simply  a  pleasure  to  read  a  confirmation  of  my 
own  previous  convictions. 

Please  tell  me  whether  my  twelve — and  four- 
teen— year-old  elegiacs  have  given  you  any  satis- 
faction.    "Full  sense"  was  given  me  for  the  sec- 
ond copy    (I   hope  you  can  construe  that   Eton 
phrase),  and  I  am  rather  proud  of  it  to  this  day. 
I  hope  that  Lady  Houghton  is  better,  and  gains 
health  with  the  summer  in  the  country. 
With  all  remembrances, 
Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  IX 
To  J.  BERTRAM  PAYNE 

36,  Wilton  Crescent. 

February  Jth,  [1865]. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  must  ask  you  to  let  me  have  back  from 
the  printers  the  missing  leaves  of  my  MS.1  as  I 
want  to  preserve  it  for  reference.  Two  I  think 
are  wanting  (one  returned  by  myself)  between 
those  received  Friday  and  the  last  batch;  and 
others  beginning  from  the  second  Chorus  in  the 
play. 

1  The  MS.  of  Atalanta  in  Calydon. 
22 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  hope  the  proofs  will  be  read  more  regularly 
and  quickly  as  I  am  impatient  to  have  the  work 
over  this  week,  which  I  really  think  it  ought  to 
be.  I  see  no  recent  advertisement  in  the  weekly 
papers.  I  must  request  that  there  may  be  enough 
of  them  inserted — as  many  as  you  think  fit  or  use- 
ful, and  as  prominently.  I  am  expecting  the  resi- 
due (unbound)  copies  of  my  former  book,1  which 
according  to  your  suggestions  I  will  forward  to 
you  as  they  come,  to  be  readvertised  with  a  fresh 
title-page. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  X 

To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 

36,  Wilton  Crescent, 

SW. 
March  I5/&,  1865. 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

I  have  just  got  your  letter  which  has 
given  me  the  greatest  pleasure  I  have  yet  had  with 
regard  to  my  book.2  I  was  in  hopes  it  would  find 
favour  with  you,  as  I  think  it  is  the  best  executed 
and  sustained  of  my  larger  poems.  It  was  begun 

1  The   Queen-Mother  and  Rosamund. 

2  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  4to,  1865. 

23 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

last  autumn  twelvemonth,  when  we  were  all  fresh- 
ly unhappy,  and  finished  just  after  I  got  the  news 
in  September  last  of  Mr.  Landor's  death,  which 
was  a  considerable  trouble  to  me  as  I  had  hoped 
against  hope  or  reason  that  he  who  in  the  spring  at 
Florence  had  accepted  the  dedication  of  an  unfin- 
ished poem  would  live  to  receive  and  read  it.  You 
will  recognise  the  allusion  to  his  life  and  death  at 
pp.  25,  26.  As  it  is  he  never  read  anything  of  mine 
more  mature  than  Rosamund.  In  spite  of  the  fune- 
real circumstances  which  I  suspect  have  a  little 
deepened  the  natural  colours  of  Greek  fatalism 
here  and  there,  so  as  to  have  already  incurred  a 
charge  of  "rebellious  antagonism"  and  such-like 
things,  I  never  enjoyed  anything  more  in  my  life 
than  the  composition  of  this  poem,  which  though 
a  work  done  by  intervals,  was  very  rapid  and 
pleasant.  Allowing  for  a  few  after  insertions,  two 
or  three  in  all,  from  p.  66  to  83  (as  far  as  the 
Chorus)  was  the  work  of  two  afternoons,  and  from 
p.  83  to  the  end  was  the  work  of  two  other  after- 
noons: so  you  will  understand  that  I  enjoyed  my 
work.  I  think  it  is  pure  Greek,  and  the  first  poem 
of  the  sort  in  modern  times,  combining  lyric  and 
dramatic  work  on  the  old  principle.  Shelley's 
Prometheus  is  magnificent  and  un-Hellenic,  spoilt 
too  in  my  mind  by  the  infusion  of  philanthropic 
doctrinaire  views  and  "progress  of  the  species"; 
and  by  what  I  gather  from  Lewes's  life  of  Goethe 

24 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

the  Iphigenia  in  Tauris  must  be  also  impregnated 
with  modern  morals  and  feelings.  As  for  Profes- 
sor Arnold's  Merope,  the  clothes  are  well  enough, 
but  where  has  the  body  gone?  So  I  thought  and 
still  think  the  field  was  clear  for  me. 

At  the  time  when  you  were  so  ill  I  got  bulletins 
constantly  through  Aunt  Ju,1  and  when  things  be- 
gan to  improve  I  thought  of  writing,  but  it  was 
considered  better  not.  I  could  have  heard  nothing 
more  than  I  did,  and  said  nothing  that  you  did  not 
know.  At  least  I  hope  and  suppose  all  of  you 
know  what  a  bad  time  it  was  for  me  as  for  others. 

I  am  raging  in  silence  at  the  postponement  from 
day  to  day  of  Mr.  Carlyle's  volumes.  He  ought  to 
be  in  London  tying  firebrands  to  the  tails  of  those 
unclean  foxes  called  publishers  and  printers. 
Meantime  the  world  is  growing  lean  with  hunger 
and  ravenous  with  expectation.  I  finished  the 
fourth  volume  last  May  in  a  huge  garden  at  Fie- 
sole,  the  nightingales  and  roses  serving  by  way  of 
salt  and  spice  to  the  divine  dish  of  battles  and 
intrigues.  I  take  greater  delight  in  the  hero,  who 
was  always  a  hero  of  mine  and  more  comprehen- 
sible to  my  heathen  mind  than  any  Puritan,  at  every 
step  the  book  takes.  Trust  in  Providence  some- 
what spoils  heroism,  to  me  at  least.  The  letter  at 
the  end  of  vol.  4,  coming  where  and  when  it  does,  is 

1  Miss  Julia  Swinburne  (1796-1893),  the  eldest  daughter  of 
the  poet's  grandfather. 

25 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

a  sample  of  what  I  conceive  and  enjoy  as  the  high- 
est and  most  reasonable  heroic  temper.  "A  God- 
intoxicated  man"  of  course  can  fight,  but  I  prefer 
a  man  who  fights  sober.  Whether  he  gets  drunk 
on  faith  or  on  brandy,  it  is  still  "Dutch  courage," 
as  the  sailors  call  it.  I  must  say  Frederick's  clear, 
cold  purity  of  pluck,  looking  neither  upward  nor 
around  for  any  help  or  comfort,  seems  to  me  a 
much  more  wholesome  and  more  admirable  state 
of  mind  than  Cromwell's  splendid  pietism.  And 
then  who  would  not  face  all  chances  if  he  were 
convinced  that  the  Gods  were  specially  interested 
on  his  side  and  personally  excited  about  his  failure 
or  success?  It  is  the  old  question  between  Jews 
and  Greeks,  and  I,  who  can  understand  Leonidas 
better  than  Joshua,  must  prefer  Marathon  to  Gil- 
gal. 

Besides,  as  a  king  and  a  private  man,  Frederick 
is  to  me  altogether  complete  and  satisfactory,  with 
nothing  of  what  seems  to  me  the  perverse  Puritan 
Christianity  on  the  one  hand,  or  on  the  other  of 
the  knaveries  and  cutpurse  rascalities  which  I  sus- 
pect were  familiar  at  times  to  the  greater,  as  al- 
ways to  the  smaller,  Buonaparte.  I  only  draw  the 
line  at  his  verses;  and  even  they  have  almost  a 
merit  of  their  own  by  dint  of  their  supreme  de- 
merits. As  extremes  meet,  such  portentous  in- 
famy in  the  metrical  line  becomes  an  inverted  sign 

26 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

of  genius.  But  was  such  a  litter  of  doggrels 
whelped  before  by  wise  man  or  fool? 

I  am  very  glad  to  hear  good  accounts  of  Sir 
Walter  and  of  your  projects  in  the  building  way, 
which  sound  alluring.  I  only  wish  you  were  in 
London  for  Madox  Brown's  Exhibition  of  pic- 
tures, which  is  superb.  I  never  knew  till  now  how 
great  and  various  and  consistent  a  painter  he  is. 
If  in  spite  of  your  neighbourhood  to  their  arch 
enemy  you  still  retain  any  charity  for  "the  poor 
Fine  Arts,"  there  is  plenty  to  see  just  now  of  a 
first-rate  kind:  but  I  will  not  tire  you  any  further, 
unless  I  write  again. 

We  are  all  fairly  well,  though  some  of  us  feel 
this  first  English  winter,  after  so  many  spent 
abroad,  unpleasantly  enough.  I  am  staying  just 
now  at  my  father's  temporary  house  in  town  taken 
for  the  winter,  and  am  looking  out  in  a  vague, 
desolate  way  for  chambers  where  I  shall  be  able 
to  shift  for  myself  en  permanence.  My  father,  as 
you  may  have  heard,  has  completed  the  purchase 
of  his  place  in  Oxfordshire,  Holm  Wood.  They 
move  in,  I  believe,  next  month. 

You  must  have  seen  Tennyson's  book  of  Se- 
lections, and  I  hope  agree  with  me  that  he  might 
have  made  a  better  picking  out  of  the 
lot.  I  say  that  Eoadicea,  as  the  highest  if  not 
sweetest  of  all  the  notes  he  ever  struck,  should  have 
served  as  prelude  to  the  book.  The  yellow-ring- 

27 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

leted  Britoness  is  worth  many  score  of  revered 
Victorias.  His  volume  of  last  summer  struck  me 
as  a  new  triumph  worth  any  of  the  old  l ;  I  read 
it  with  a  pleasure  as  single  and  complete  as  I 
might  have  done  at  thirteen. 

With  best  remembrances  from  all  to  yourself 
and  Sir  Walter, 

Believe  me  ever, 

Yours  (in  spite  of  ill-usage)  most  filially, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XI 

To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Ashburnham  Place, 
Battle, 
Sussex. 

Tuesday,  [1865]. 

INFAME  LlBERTIN, 

Write  me  a  word  according  to  promise. 
I  shall  be  up  in  town  in  a  day  or  two  on  my  way 
from  an  uncle's  to  a  father's,  and  between  domestic 
life,  rural  gallops  with  cousins,  study  of  Art  and 
Illuminated  Manuscripts  and  Caxton  print,  and 
proofs  of  a  new  edition  of  the  virginal  poem  Ata- 

1  Tennyson's  "volume  of  last  summer"  was  Enoch  Arden, 
etc.,  originally  printed  under  the  tentative  title,  Idylls  of  the 
Hearth. 

28 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

lanta,  }e  m'enfonce  dans  des  systemes  qui  menent 
a  tout — out,  chere  fille,  absolument  a  tout. 

I  have  added  yet  four  more  jets  of  boiling  and 
gushing  infamy  to  the  perennial  and  poisonous 
fountain  of  Dolores.  O  mon  ami! 

Tout  a  toi, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — I  send  you  a  fresh  sample  of  Dolores.  If 
you  are  amiable  and  write  me  something  stimulat- 
ing as  the  smell  of  firwoods,  you  shall  have  the 
rest: 

For  the  Lords  in  whose  keeping  the  door  is 

That  opens  on  all  who  draw  breath 
Gave  the  cypress  to  Love,  my  Dolores, 

The  myrtle  to  Death. 

And  they  laughed,  changing  hands  in  the  measure, 
And  they  mixed  and  made  peace  after  strife; 

Pain  melted  in  tears,  and  was  Pleasure, 
Death  tingled  with  blood,  and  was  Life. 

Voila,  mes  amis,  une  verlte  que  ne  comprendront 
jamais  les  sots  idolateurs  de  la  vertu. 

P.S. — Since  writing  the  above  I  have  added  ten 
verses  to  Dolores, — tres-infames  et  tres-bien 
tournes.  "Oh!  Monsieur,  peut-on  prendre  du 
plaisir  a  de  telles  horreurs?" 


29 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XII 
MR.  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Tuesday  evening  or  Wednesday  morning, 

2  a.m.  [1865]. 

DEAR  PURNELL, 

Sorry  you  should  have  waited  in  vain 
this  evening — but  you  were  warned.  And  when 
you  know  I  have  had  to  spend  my  time  in  leaving- 
taking  with  a  friend  1  starting  for  Africa,  you  will 
excuse 

Yours  ever 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XIII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Thorn/old  Park, 

Front, 
Tunbridge  Wells. 

October  i$th,  [1865]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

Mr.  Maurice,2  you  may  remember,  con- 
siders Atalanta  a  complement  to  the  hitherto  im- 

1  Sir  Richard  Burton. 

2  The  Rev.  Frederick  Denison  Maurice  (1805-1872), 

30 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

perfect  Evidences  of  Christianity.  As  the  second 
Paley,  I  expect  at  least  a  lay  archidiaconate.  Have 
you  read  your  friend  and  philanthropic  colleague 
Mr.  T.  Hughes's  address  on  public  schools?  It 
was  to  me  (as  Mr.  Pecksniff  says)  "very  soothing." 
Ever  yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XIV 
To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 

22,  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
December  iOtht  1865. 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

I  would  have  written  two  days  since  in 
answer  to  your  last  and  most  kind  letter,  but  that 
I  wanted  to  take  time  and  reply  as  fully  as  I  could. 
I  must  first,  and  once  again,  thank  both  yourself 
and  Sir  Walter  alike  for  your  great  kindness.  You 
will  both,  I  hope,  believe  that  I  know  how  much 
I  am  indebted  to  the  friendship  and  the  courage 
which  made  you  defend  me  against  the  villainy 
of  fools  and  knaves.  I  wish  I  could  better  ex- 
press my  gratitude  to  him  or  to  you.  But  I  tried 
to  express  it  in  my  second  letter  written  and  posted 
on  the  same  day  as  that  which  you  answered.  I 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

know  I  must  have  failed — but  I  did  what  I  could. 

Since  writing  to  you,  I  have  been  reminded  of 
things  as  infamous  and  as  ridiculous  inflicted  upon 
others  as  undeserving  as  ever  I  am.  Two  years 
ago,  for  instance,  I  was  informed  (of  course  on  the 
best  and  most  direct  authority)  that  a  friend  of 
yours  as  of  mine  had  boasted  aloud  of  murdering 
his  own  illegitimate  children.  That  they  never 
had  existed  was  of  course  nothing  to  the  purpose. 
Fortunately,  in  this  case,  I  was  cited  as  a  witness — 
and  did  pretty  well,  I  believe,  knock  that  rumour 
on  the  head.  I  cannot  but  suppose  that  all  these 
agreeable  traditions  arise  from  one  infamous 
source.  When  it  is  found  out,  we  may  hope  to 
suppress  it  once  for  all.  Meantime,  upon  the  dou- 
ble suspicion,  I  have  refused  to  meet  in  public  a 
person  whom  I  conceive  to  be  possibly  mixed  up 
in  the  matter.  At  all  events,  I  know  that  I  have 
done  the  man  no  wrong — for  a  more  venomous 
backbiter,  I  believe,  never  existed.  The  difficulty 
in  all  such  cases  is  to  come  forward,  collar  your 
man  morally  or  physically,  and  say  "I  am  told  you 
accuse  me  of  having  confessed  to  something  dis- 
graceful. Give  me  your  reasons  for  this  lie!"  Of 
course  no  one  could  wish  to  see  his  name  dragged 
into  and  through  the  dirt  of  such  a  quarrel:  and 
therefore  any  gentleman  is  at  the  mercy  of  any 
blackguard — for  a  time. 

As  to  my  poems,  my  perplexity  is  this;  that  no 

32 


two  friends  have  ever  given  me  the  same  advice. 
Now  more  than  ever  I  would  rather  take  yours 
than  another's;  but  I  see  neither  where  to  begin 
nor  when  to  stop.  I  have  written  nothing  to  be 
ashamed  or  afraid  of.  I  have  been  advised  to  sup- 
press Atalanta,  to  cancel  Chastelard,  and  so  on  till 
not  a  line  of  my  work  would  have  been  left.  Two 
days  ago  Ruskin  called  on  me  and  stayed  for  a 
long  evening,  during  which  he  heard  a  great  part 
of  my  forthcoming  volume  of  poems,  selected  with 
a  view  to  secure  his  advice  as  to  publication  and 
the  verdict  of  the  world  of  readers  and  writers. 
It  was  impossible  to  have  a  fairer  judge.  I  have 
not  known  him  long  or  intimately;  and  he  is  neith- 
er a  rival  nor  a  reviewer.  I  can  only  say  that  I 
was  sincerely  surprised  by  the  enjoyment  he  seemed 
to  derive  from  my  work,  and  the  frankness  with 
which  he  accepted  it.  Any  poem  which  all  my 
friends  for  whose  opinion  I  care  had  advised  me 
to  omit,  should  be  omitted.  But  I  never  have  writ- 
ten such  an  one.  Some  for  example  which  you 
have  told  me  were  favourites  of  yours,  such  as  the 
Hymn  to  Proserpine  of  the  "Last  Pagan" — I  have 
been  advised  to  omit  as  likely  to  hurt  the  feeling  of 
a  religious  public.  I  cannot  but  see  that  whatever 
I  do  will  be  assailed  and  misconstrued  by  those 
who  can  do  nothing  and  who  detest  their  betters. 
I  can  only  lay  to  heart  the  words  of  Shakespeare 
— even  he  never  uttered  any  truer — "Be  thou  as 

33 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

pure  as  ice,  as  chaste  as  snow,  thou  shalt  not  escape 
calumny."  And  I  cannot,  as  Hamlet  advises,  be- 
take myself  "to  a  nunnery." 

I  believe  my  aunt  Julia  is  now  with  my  father 
and  mother  at 

Holm  Wood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames, 

where  I  mean  to  spend  this  Christmas,  not  having 
seen  them  for  some  months. 

Meantime  you  will  I  am  sure  be  glad  to  hear 
that  my  luck  is  looking  up  in  the  beautiful  liter- 
ary world  of  publishers  and  readers.  I  have  al- 
ready the  wildest  offers  made  me  for  anything  I 
will  do :  and  expect  soon  to  have  in  effect  the  con- 
trol of  a  magazine  which  I  shall  be  able  to  mould 
as  I  please.  This  has  always  been  a  dream  of  mine ; 
and  very  likely  I  shall  come  to  grief,  as  Byron  did 
on  a  similar  occasion.  Have  you  seen  Moxon's 
series  of  "poets"?  There  are  new  things  (as  of 
course  you  know)  in  the  Tennyson  which  are  worth 
looking  up — and  I  don't  remember  seeing  it  this 
year  at  Wallington.  I  am  doing  Byron  for  the 
series,  as  well  as  Landor:  and  I  am  to  meet  my 
partners  in  the  serial  work,  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, at  a  publishers'  feast  some  time  this  week. 

I  am  sorry  you  don't  like  Chastelard  person- 
ally, as  I  meant  him  for  a  nice  sort  of  fellow. 
I  send  you  the  proof  of  a  review  vvhich  the  writer 

34 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

sent  to  me,  as  evidence  that  some  people  like  him. 
I  must  say  I  thought  I  had  made  him  behave  in  a 
rather  chivalrous  way — notamment  in  the  3rd  and 
5th  acts.  I  think  it  was  George  Meredith  who 
once  told  me  that  considering  his  conduct  to  the 
Queen,  I  had  produced  in  him  the  most  perfect 
gentleman  possible. 

It  is  rather  a  "trap"  to  send  you  these  proofs 
at  the  end  of  a  long  letter — but  I  didn't  mean  to 
entrap  you  into  writing  or  returning  them  till  you 
have  nothing  better  to  do ;  and  then  you  know  what 
pleasure  you  will  have  given  me. 

Yours  most  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XV 
To  SIR  EDWARD  LYTTON-BULWER 

(Afterwards  Lord  Lytton) 

Holmwood, 

Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

January  Ijth,  1 866. 
SIR, 

I  should  have  written  before  to  thank 
you  for  a  double  kindness,  had  your  book  *  and 
letter  been  sooner  sent  on  to  my  present  address.  As 

1  The  Lost  Tales  of  Miletus. 
35 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

it  is,  you  will  no  doubt  understand  how  difficult 
I  feel  it  to  express  my  thanks  for  your  gift,  and 
for  the  letter,  to  me  even  more  valuable,  which 
accompanied  it.  To  receive  from  your  hands  a 
book  which  I  had  only  waited  to  read  till  I  should 
have  time  to  enjoy  it  at  ease  as  a  pleasure  long 
expected,  and  deferred  for  a  little  (on  the  princi- 
ple of  children  and  philosophers)  was,  I  should 
have  thought  till  now,  gratification  enough  for 
once.  But  you  contrived  at  the  same  time  to  confer 
a  greater  pleasure;  the  knowledge  that  my  first 
work l  written  since  mere  boyhood  had  obtained 
your  approval.  Of  the  enjoyment  and  admiration 
with  which  I  have  read  your  book,  I  need  not 
say  anything.  Pleasure  such  as  this  you  have  given 
to  too  many  thousands  to  care  to  receive  the  ac- 
knowledgment of  one. 

Such  thanks  as  these  I  have  owed  you,  in  com- 
mon with  all  others  of  my  age,  since  I  first  read 
your  works  as  a  child;  the  other  delegation  is  my 
own  and  prized  accordingly  as  a  private  debt, 
impossible  to  pay,  and  from  which  I  would  not 
be  relieved. 

Believe  me, 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Atalanta  in  Calydon. 

36 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XVI 
To  PAULINA,  LADY  TREVELYAN 


,  Dorset  St., 

w. 

[March  1866.] 

MY  DEAR  LADY  TREVELYAN, 

I  am  very  glad  you  approve  of  my  rough 
notes  on  Byron.  Of  course  when  I  wrote  them 
I  hoped  you  would,  and  the  essay  is  honest  so  far  as 
it  goes,  but  was  of  course  curtailed  and  confined 
in  the  dismallest  way.  I  am  going  to  "do"  Keats 
as  soon  as  my  own  book  is  out.  I  hope  Sir  Walter 
will  join  the  Cruikshank  committee.  I  am  told  by 
a  personal  friend  of  his  that  the  poor  old  great  man 
is  very  hard  up,  and  could  not  if  he  died  tomorrow 
leave  his  wife  enough  to  live  upon  after  so  long  a 
life  of  such  hard  work.  I  daresay  Scotus  will  have 
told  you  all  this  much  better  than  I  can. 

I  was  very  sorry  to  hear  of  your  having  been 
again  so  ill.  I  hope  and  trust  that  you  are  well 
now.  My  mother  has  been  going  on  in  the  same 
way,  which  is  most  improper;  but  is  now  begin- 
ning to  pick  up  strength  after  a  severe  illness, 
and  can  at  least  sit  up  and  write  to  me.  That  both 
my  maternal  relatives  should  be  so  ill  at  once  is 
too  much  for  a  filial  heart.  Pray  set  a  better  ex- 
ample in  future. 

37 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Ruskin  and  Meredith,  among  others,  both  write 
to  me  about  the  Byron  in  a  most  satisfactory  way: 
but  your  note  has  given  me  more  pleasure  than 
theirs.  As  to  the  forthcoming  magazine,  having 
declined  any  share  in  the  business  work  for  myself, 
I  was  in  hopes  it  would  have  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  Wm.  Rossetti,  who  would  have  done  the  neces- 
sary work  better  than  any  one  I  can  think  of.  As 
it  is,  if  I  contribute,  it  will  be  on  the  old  terms 
that  anything  I  sign  shall  go  in,  anything  (in  rea- 
son) I  wish  admitted  or  excluded  shall  be,  and 
generally  that  when  I  please  I  may  have  a  finger 
or  ten  fingers  in  the  editorial  pie.  This  is  really 
all  I  know  of  the  project.  I  met  the  working  edi- 
tor (as  is  to  be)  yesterday,  and  he  seemed  sensible 
and  well  disposed. 

I  hope  soon  to  send  you  my  own  Poems  and  am, 
yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XVII 
To  J.  BERTRAM  PAYNE  * 

[No  place  nor  date. 

April,  1866.] 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  write  at  once  to  thank  you  for  your 
prompt  answer  to  my  note.  The  man's  negligence 
was  the  more  vexatious  to  me  as  it  made  me  neces- 
sarily appear  neglectful  of  my  friends,  but  I  trust 
it  is  remedied  by  this  time.  I  wrote  about  the 
advertisements  in  consequence  of  hearing  so  many 
people  remark  that  they  had  seen  none  or  few, 
which  looked  as  if  the  book  were  not  yet  ready. 
In  a  day  or  two  I  hope  to  send  you  the  missing 
pages  of  my  Blake  MS.  Meanwhile,  would  it 
not  save  time  if  the  printers  were  to  put  in  type, 
and  send  me  in  slips,  the  remainder  of  the  MS.  for 
correction,  and  insert  what  is  wanting  when  the 
book  was  paged?  I  am  in  a  hurry  to  have  done 
with  it  at  last. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — Excuse  my  scrawl,  I  cannot  get  a  decent 
pen.  I  wish  you  could  recommend  me  where  to 

1  J.  Bertram  Payne  was  the  successor  of  Edward  Moxon, 
who  died  in  1858.  He  was  the  responsible  manager  of  Messrs. 
Edward  Moxon  &  Co.  during  the  whole  period  covered  by 
Swinburne's  dealings  with  that  firm. 

39 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

deal.  I  reopen  this  to  add  that  the  two  copies  * 
sent  to  my  father's  at  Holmwood  did  arrive  safe: 
as  also  one  sent  to  Mr.  Powell  at  Lee. 


LETTER  XVIII 

To  LORD  LYTTON 

220,  Dorset  Street, 

Portman  Square, 

W. 
August  6th,  [1866]. 

DEAR  LORD  LYTTON, 

Your  letter  was  doubly  acceptable  to  me, 
coming  as  it  did  on  the  same  day  with  the  abusive 
reviews  of  my  book2  which  appeared  on  Satur- 
day. While  I  have  the  approval  of  those  from 
whom  alone  praise  can  give  pleasure,  I  can  dis- 
pense with  the  favour  of  journalists.  I  thank  you 
sincerely  for  the  pleasure  you  have  given  me,  and 
am  very  glad  if  my  poems  have  given  any  to  you. 
In  any  case,  I,  with  the  rest  of  the  world,  must  re- 
main your  debtor  without  prospect  of  payment. 

Nothing  would  give  me  more  pleasure  than  to 
accept  your  kind  invitation,3  should  it  be  con- 

1  Of  Poems  and  Ballads. 

2  Poems  and  Ballads,  1866. 

8  To  stay  at  Knebworth  and  consult  about  the  transfer  of 
Poems  and  Ballads. 

40 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

venient  to  you  to  accept  me  for  a  day  or  two  in 
the  course  of  the  next  fortnight.  For  some  ten 
days  or  so  I  am  hampered  by  engagements  dif- 
ficult to  break  even  for  a  day. 

Believe  me,  with  many  thanks  for  the  kindness 
of  your  letter, 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XIX 
To  LORD  LYTTON 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
August  IO/A,  [1866]. 

DEAR  LORD  LYTTON, 

I  will  come  on  the  i6th  if  that  day 
suits  you.  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  see  Mr.  For- 
ster,  for  whose  works  I  have  always  felt  a  great 
admiration.  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  pleasure 
and  encouragement  your  last  letter  gave  me.  You 
will  see  that  it  came  at  a  time  when  I  wanted 
something  of  the  kind,  when  I  tell  you  that  in 
consequence  of  the  abusive  reviews  of  my  book, 
the  publisher  (without  consulting  me,  without 
warning,  and  without  compensation)  had  actually 
withdrawn  it  from  circulation.  I  have  no  right 

4i 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

to  trouble  you  with  my  affairs,  but  I  cannot  resist 
the  temptation  to  trespass  so  far  upon  your  kind- 
ness as  to  ask  what  course  you  would  recommend 
me  to  take  in  such  a  case.  I  am  resolved  to  cancel 
nothing,  and  (of  course)  to  transfer  my  books  to 
any  other  publisher  I  can  find.  I  am  told  by 
lawyers  that  I  might  claim  legal  redress  for  a 
distinct  violation  of  contract  on  Messrs.  Moxon's 
part,  but  I  do  not  wish  to  drag  the  matter  before 
a  law  court.  This  business,  you  will  see,  is  some- 
thing worse  than  a  scolding,  to  which,  from  my 
Eton  days  upwards,  I  have  been  sufficiently  accus- 
tomed. 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XX 
To  LORD  LYTTON 

22at  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
August  I3th,  [1866]. 

DEAR  LORD  LYTTON, 

I  am  much  obliged  by  the  letter  of  ad- 
vice you  wrote  me,  and  if  Lord  Houghton  had 
not  gone  off  to  Vichy,  I  should  certainly  take 
counsel  with  him.  As  it  is,  I  am  compelled  to 
decide  without  further  help.  I  have  no  relation 

42 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

with  Messrs.  Moxon  except  of  a  strictly  business 
character,  and  considering  that  the  head  of  this 
firm  has  broken  his  agreement  by  refusing  to  con- 
tinue the  sale  of  my  poems,  without  even  speaking 
to  me  on  the  matter,  I  cannot  but  desire,  first  of 
all,  to  have  no  further  dealings  with  anyone  so 
untrustworthy.  The  book  is  mine.  I  agreed  with 
him  to  issue  an  edition  of  1,000  copies,  he  under- 
taking to  print,  publish  and  sell  them,  and  if  the 
edition  sold  off,  I  was  to  have  two-thirds  of  the 
profits.  He  does  not  now  deny  the  contract  which 
he  refuses  to  fulfil ;  he  simply  said  to  a  friend  who 
called  on  him  as  my  representative,  that  on  hear- 
ing there  was  to  be  an  article  in  The  Times  at- 
tacking my  book  as  improper,  he  could  not  con- 
tinue the  sale.  As  to  the  suppression  of  separate 
passages  or  poems,  it  could  not  be  done  without 
injuring  the  whole  structure  of  the  book,  where 
every  part  has  been  as  carefully  considered  and 
arranged  as  I  could  manage,  and  under  the  circum- 
stances, it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  no  choice  but 
to  break  off  my  connection  with  the  publisher. 

I  have  consulted  friends  older  than  myself,  and 
more  experienced  in  the  business  ways  of  the  world, 
and  really  it  seems  to  me  I  have  no  alternative. 
Before  the  book  was  published,  if  my  friends  had 
given  me  strong  and  unanimous  advice  to  with- 
draw or  to  alter  any  passage,  I  should  certainly 

43 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

have  done  so — in  two  instances  I  did,  rather  against 
my  own  impulse,  which  is  a  fair  proof  that  I  am 
not  too  headstrong  or  conceited  to  listen  to  friendly 
counsel.  But  now  to  alter  my  course  or  mutilate 
my  published  work  seems  to  me  somewhat  like 
deserting  one's  colours.  One  may  or  may  not  re- 
pent having  enlisted,  but  to  lay  down  one's  arms, 
except  under  compulsion,  remains  intolerable. 
Even  if  I  did  not  feel  the  matter  in  this  way,  my 
withdrawal  would  not  undo  what  has  been  done, 
nor  unsay  what  has  been  said. 

Yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXI 

To  LORD  LYTTON 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
August  I7/A,  [1866]. 


DEAR  LORD  LYTTON, 

I  could  catch  neither  train  nor  posi 
yesterday,  being  too  unwell  all  day  to  rise.  As 
I  am  quite  well  to-day,  I  hope  this  will  reach  you 
before  the  afternoon  train,  by  which  I  propose  to 
come  down.  I  am  very  sorry  to  be  a  day  late  in 

44 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

thanking  you  personally  for  your  letter  and  ad- 
vice. 

I  am, 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXII 
To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Knebworth, 
Stevenage, 

Herts. 
[August,  1866.] 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

You  never  turned  up  on  Wednesday 
night,  and  kept  my  unhappy  old  female  sitting 
up  for  you  till  three,  and  on  Thursday  I  was  very 
seedy  and  awaited  you  in  vain.  O  monstre!  homme 
in  fame! 

I  want  you  to  get  for  me  two  Chastelards  and 
a  Byron,  and  send  them  here  at  once  if  possible. 
Excuse  my  troubling  you  about  my  errands,  but 
I  know  you  won't  mind,  and  I  can't  write  to 
Moxons.  I've  had  a  note  from  Hotten  which  I 
must  answer  at  once.  Lord  Lytton  advises  my  re- 
issuing the  Poems  and  Ballads  at  once  with  him, 
and  breaking  off  wholly  with  Payne,  which  is 
satisfactory.  He  says  either  Hotten  should  buy 
the  surplus  copies  of  the  edition  in  his  own  inter- 

45 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

est,  which  would  be  impaired  if  Payne  sold  it  as 
waste  paper;  or  I  must  buy  them  up  under  a 
friend's  name.  Or,  Payne  must  be  compelled  to 
destroy  them  instead.  This  is  his  advice  as  a 
man  of  business.  Will  you  tell  Hotten  this,  and 
let  him  act  on  it?  Please,  too,  find  out  what  Hot- 
ten  proposes  about  my  Blake,  which  is  nearly  all 
in  type.  If  he  offers  to  buy  it  up  I  shall  not  al- 
low Payne  to  publish  it  or  anything  more  of  mine. 
Please  ask  also  about  the  remainders  and  next 
edition  of  Chastelard,  Atalanta,  and  The  Queen 
Mother.  Lytton  thinks  Hotten's  offers  very  fair, 
and  advises  me  to  arrange  in  the  same  way  about 
the  other  books.  So  if  Hotten  likes  to  offer  for 
them  and  arrange  with  Payne  separately,  well  and 
good.  I  will  reply  as  soon  as  he  makes  his  offer. 
With  Payne  I  will  hold  no  further  communica- 
tion except  through  a  third  party. 

All  this  you  may  shew  or  read  to  Hotten  if 
you  please.  Pardon  for  the  trouble  my  friend- 
ship entails  on  you,  and  believe  me, 

Your  affectionate, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — I  hope  your  cousin  is  well;  please  re- 
member me  to  her.  It  is  very  jolly  here,  people, 
place,  and  weather.  The  furniture  would  at  once 
cause  Gabriel  to  attempt  murder  of  the  owner 
through  envy — so  rich  are  the  cabinets,  etc.,  in 
every  hole  and  corner. 

46 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XXIII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames, 

Nov.   2nd,   [1866]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  am  glad  you  like  my  riposte.  I 
thought  the  sharper,  and  simpler  in  tone  it  was, 
the  better.  My  motto  is  either  to  spare  or  strike 
hard.  Mere  titillation  is  lost  on  porcine  hides. 

The  paper  in  Fraser  I  have  not  seen,  but  am 
expecting.  I  have  had  letters  already  from  Rus- 
kin  and  your  friend  Mr.  Conway,  who  recalls  our 
meeting  under  the  auspices  of  the  sea-beds  (?), 
and  intimates  that  having  been  fighting  my  battles 
in  the  New  York  Tribune  he  means  to  continue 
apropos  of  the  Notes,1  of  which  I  have  sent  him 
a  copy.  It  is  a  very  courteous  and  friendly  letter. 

If  you  have  read  the  Drum  Taps  of  his  coun- 
tryman, the  great  Walt  (whose  friends  have  pub- 
lished a  pamphlet  in  his  defence)  I  daresay  you 
agree  with  me  that  his  dirge  or  nocturne  over  your 
friend  Lincoln  is  a  superb  piece  of  music  and 
colour.  It  is  infinitely  impressive  when  read 
aloud. 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C,  SWINBURNE, 

1  Notes  on  Poems  and  Reviews. 
47 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XXIV 

To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
Monday,  [1866]. 

FRIPON, 

I  want  you  to  find  out  for  me  what  (if 
any)  day  would  suit  Ruskin  to  come  with  your- 
self and  Burne  Jones  to  my  rooms  for  an  evening. 
He  promised  to  come  some  day,  and  I  am  now  in 
town  for  ten  days  or  so.  There  was  to  have  been 
a  reading  given,  and  he  said  he  should  like  to  meet 
you  two. 

Tout  a  toi, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXV 
To  SIR  RICHARD  F.  BURTON 

Holmwood, 

Henley-o  n-  Thames. 

January  nth,  1867. 

MY  DEAR  BURTON, 

I  was  within  an  ace  of  losing  your  let- 
ter altogether,  and  only  recovered  it  from  the  Dead 
Letter  Office  by  accident — or  rather  by  the  inter- 

48 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

vention  of  that  all-wise  and  beneficent  Providence 
which  regulates  all  sublunary  things.  You  may 
know  perhaps  that  Messrs.  Moxon  &  Co.,  to  whom 
it  was  addressed,  tried  to  swamp  my  book  by  with- 
drawing it  from  circulation  when  the  storm  of 
warm  water  began  to  seethe  and  rage  in  the  British 
tea-kettle,  trusting  that  in  British  eyes  their  frau- 
dulent breach  of  contract  would  be  justified  by  the 
plea  of  virtuous  abhorrence.  Of  course  I  withdrew 
all  my  books  from  their  hands,  and  declined  any 
further  dealings  with  such  a  den  of  thieves.  Con- 
sequently these  denizens  of  the  Cities  of  the  Plain, 
whose  fathers  somehow  escaped  with  Lot  and  his 
respectable  family,  pretended  ignorance  of  my 
address  (which,  as  well  as  my  present  publishers, 
they  knew  well  enough  the  day  before),  and  dis- 
missed a  whole  heap  of  letters,  papers,  and  books 
sent  me  from  America  to  the  Dead  Letter  Office. 
But  for  this  you  would  have  heard  from  me  long 
ago,  and  received  the  book  and  pamphlet  I  now 
send  you.  You  would  have  had  them  long  before 
if  I  had  had  your  address  by  me. 

I  am  glad  you  like  my  swallow  song,  as  I  do 
your  version  of  the  Rondinella  as  far  as  given. 
I  am  still  the  centre  of  such  a  moral  chaos  that 
our  excellent  Houghton  maintains  a  discreet  and 
consistent  neutrality,  except  that  he  wrote  me  a 
letter  thoroughly  approving  and  applauding  the 
move  taken ;  but  I  have  not  set  eyes  on  his  revered 

49 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

form  for  months.  Your  impending  opulence,  and 
my  immediate  infamy,  will  too  evidently  cut  us 
from  the  shelter  of  his  bosom.  I  wish  you  had  been 
at  hand  or  within  reach  this  year,  to  see  the  mis- 
sives I  got  from  nameless  quarters.  One  anony- 
mous letter,  from  Dublin  threatened  me,  if  I  did 
not  suppress  my  book  within  six  weeks  from  that 
date,  with  castration.  The  writer,  "when  I  least 
expected,  would  waylay  me,  slip  my  head  in  a 
bag,  and  remove  the  obnoxious  organs;  he  had 
seen  his  gamekeeper  do  it  with  cats."  This  is  ver- 
batim, though  quoted  from  memory,  as  I  bestowed 
the  document  on  a  friend  who  collects  curiosities. 
I  beg  to  add  that  my  unoffending  person  is  as 
yet  no  worse  than  it  was.  This  was  the  greatest 
spree  of  all;  but  I  have  had  letters  and  notices 
sent  me  (American  and  British)  by  the  score, 
which  were  only  less  comic  whether  they  come 
from  friend  or  foe. 

I  hope  we  shall  have  you  back  before  '69,  not 
only  for  the  cellar's  sake,  sublime  as  that  "realised 
ideal"  is  certain  to  be.  I  have  in  hand  a  scheme 
of  mixed  verse  and  prose — a  sort  of  etude  a  la 
Balzac  plus  the  poetry — which  I  flatter  myself 
will  be  more  offensive  and  objectionable  to  Bri- 
tannia than  anything  1  have  yet  done.  You  see 
I  have  now  a  character  to  keep  up,  and  by  the 
grace  of  Cotytto  I  will  endeavour  not  to  come 
short  of  it — at  least  in  my  writings.  Tell  me,  if 

5° 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

you  have  time,  what  you  think  of  Dolores  and 
Anactoria  in  full  print. 

I  hope  you  will  prevail  on  Mrs.  Burton  to  for- 
give the  use  made  in  the  former  poem  of  the 
B.V.U.,  whose  son  I  saw  the  other  day  mentioned 
in  a  tract  by  a  Rabbinical  Atheist  as  "Joshua  ben 
Joseph."  I  wish  I  could  run  over  to  "5  o'clock 
tea,"  but  can  only  send  remembrances  to  you  both, 
and  hope  you  will  not  have  forgotten  me  when 
you  return  to  this  "plaisant  pays." 
Tou jours  a  vous, 

A.   C.  SwiNBURNa 


LETTER  XXVI 

To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Arts  Club, 

Hanover  Square. 

January  i^th,  [1867]. 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

Can  you  come  with  William  Rossetti 
and  me  to  the  Museum  to-morrow  at  twelve,  to 
select  from  Blake's  work  there  the  engravings  for 
my  book?  If  you  can't,  or  don't  care  to  come,  look 
me  up  (giving  notice)  some  day  this  week.  I  am 
up  only  for  a  few  days  about  this  Blake  business, 
and  I  want  to  see  you.  It  is  ages  since  I  did,  and 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

I  hear  you  have  been  seedy,  which  is  wrong,  and 
mene  a  tout, 

Your  affectionate, 

A.   C.,  SwiNBURNEi. 


LETTER  XXVII 

To  GERALD  MASSEY 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 
Portman  Square, 

W. 
May  22nd,  1867. 

SIR, 

I  must  apologise  for  having  left  so  long 
unanswered  a  letter  which  it  was  a  pleasure  to 
receive.  I  have  been  unwell  and  preoccupied  of 
late,  and  I  fear  a  very  bad  correspondent — and 
having  first  put  apart,  and  then  mislaid  your  let- 
ter, was  unable  to  write  to  any  purpose  for  want 
of  a  direction. 

As  soon  as  I  received  it  I  desired  my  publisher 
to  forward  to  you  my  last  books,  supposing  that 
he  had  your  address.  I  hope  you  have  received 
them  before  now. 

Of  your  work  on  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  I  read 
something  when  it  appeared,  but  had  not  time 
to  follow  it  out,  though  interested  alike  in  your 
subject  and  your  view  of  it.  Hitherto  I  am  my- 

52 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

self  unconvinced  that  any  of  the  series  were  writ- 
ten in  the  character  of  another  real  person;  they 
all  seem  to  me  either  fanciful  or  personal — auto- 
biographic or  dramatic.  But  I  hope  before  long 
to  study  the  question  started  by  you  more  fully. 

I  have  been  reading  this  evening  your  essay  on 
Lamb  in  the  Fraser  of  this  month.  Will  you  ex- 
cuse the  protest  of  a  younger  workman  in  the  same 
field  as  yourself  against  your  depreciatory  men- 
tion of  Lamb's  Poetry?  I  remember  hearing  Ten- 
nyson speak  of  it  in  the  same  tone;  but  against 
both  my  seniors  I  maintain  that  there  are  two  or 
three  poems,  and  many  passages,  of  serious  and 
noble  beauty,  besides  the  verses  you  quote  on  his 
Mother's  death.  I  have  always  thought  that  but 
for  his  incomparable  prose  the  world  would  have 
set  twice  as  much  store  by  his  verse.  As  a  fel- 
low student  and  lover  of  his  genius  and  character 
you  will  understand  my  wish  to  admire  him,  and 
have  him  admired  by  others,  on  all  sides;  and  you 
will  see  also  with  what  interest  and  attention  I 
have  read  your  essay. 

Believe  me, 

Very  truly  yours, 
A.  C,  SWINBURNE. 


53 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XXVIII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
Thursday,  July  iSth,  [1867]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

My  father  came  up  in  the  afternoon 
of  Saturday  [July  13^],  and  I  came  down  hither 
with  him  on  Sunday,  having  again  seen  Mr. 
.  Tweed,  who  had  a  talk  over  me  with  Dr.  Alison, 
my  father's  medical  attendant,  who  has  known  me 
for  years,  though  I  have  never  hitherto  had  much 
occasion  to  trouble  him  professionally.  They  have 
together  prescribed  for  me  a  course  of  diet  and 
tonic  medicine,  and  advise  country  air.  Since 
my  arrival  I  have  not  felt  a  moment's  pain  or 
sickness,  and  am  now  really  quite  well,  although 
rather  tired  and  weakened.  Nothing  could  be 
more  attentive  than  your  people  were  to  me  until 
I  was  able  to  move.  I  was  quite  sorry  for  the 
trouble  given  to  you  and  them,  and  as  grateful 
for  the  care  and  kindness.  I  find  Madame  Mohl x 
was  good  enough  to  call  and  ask  after  me,  but  I 
had  left  town.  Will  you  thank  her  for  me,  and 
tell  her  how  much  better  I  am?  Besides  Alison's 

1Mary   [Clarke]    von  Mohl    (1793-1883),   the  friend  of 
Madame  Recamier. 

54 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

and  Tweed's  prescriptions,  we  have  a  very  good 
doctor  here  constantly  at  hand,  Reading  being  but 
a  short  drive  hence.  The  weather  is  wavering 
between  sun  and  rain,  but  the  air  here  suits  me 
well.  I  am  prescribed  "light  literature" — of  all 
things!  as  if  I  ever  indulged  in  heavy!  I  am  sure 
Alison  has  a  vague  idea  of  hours  spent  in  hard 
study  of  philosophy  and  history — though  I  assure 
him  that  the  most  abstract  authors  I  read  are  Flau- 
bert and  Trollope. 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C,  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXIX 
To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

July  2yd,  1867. 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

I  write,  as  I  cannot  hope  to  see  you 
before  your  marriage  comes  off,  only  to  say  how 
heartily  I  wish  you  all  the  joy  possible,  and  shake 
hands  across  the  paper.  It  is  for  my  own  satisfac- 
tion ;  I  should  not  like  to  feel  excluded  from  among 
the  friends  who  wish  you  joy.  I  would  give  much 
to  have  something  better  to  send  than  my  love  and 
good  wishes.  Take  them  in  default  of  the  better 

55 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

thing,  and  write  me  a  line  if  you  have  leisure.  I 
suppose  your  time  is  now  near  at  hand,  and  I  am 
here  under  doctors'  hands  for  a  month  more  at 
least.  I  had  a  very  bad  attack  a  week  since,  be- 
ginning with  a  sudden  and  unprovoked  fainting 
fit  about  noon.  My  father  was  telegraphed  for, 
and  I  was  brought  down  hither  next  day.  I  am  all 
right  now,  only  not  over  strong,  and  have  to  take 
care,  and  submit  to  the  care  of  others.  I  find  com- 
fort in  reflecting  that  I  am  not  the  first  or  the 
unluckiest  of  innocent  sufferers. 

I  hope  you  and  yours  will  remain  in  Fate's  good 
books.  Give  my  love  to  Ned  and  Gabriel,1  and 
all  friends.  And  with  renewed  love  and  wishes 
to  yourself, 

Believe  me  always, 
Your  affectionate, 

ALGERNON  C.  SWINBURNE. 

LETTER  XXX 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
August  8th,  [1867]. 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  have  written  to  Hotten  to  send  you  the 
number  of  Poems  and  Ballads  desired.     Thanks 

1  Edward  Burne- Jones  and  D.  G.  Rossetti. 
56 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

again  for  all  the  trouble  you  took  with  me.  I 
have  had  no  return  of  fainting  or  any  discomfort 
here  beyond  a  strained  knee.  They  doctor  me 
with  tonics  and  champagne,  and  I  thrive  so  well 
that  having  no  one  to  speak  to  and  nothing  beyond 
the  family  wall  I  shall  end  by  writing  something 
which  will  make  the  author  "du  hideux  roman 
de  J  .  .  ."  turn  enviously  in  his  grave.  One  always 
writes  des  horreurs  when  one  is  en  famille.  I  have 
two  innocent  songs  forthcoming  in  the  Fortnight- 
ly /  also  some  prose  notes.2  I  have  told  Hotten 
to  send  Lord  Broughton  a  copy  of  my  Byron  essay, 
and  shall  be  delighted  if  it  pleases  him.  Thanks 
for  the  hint.  Have  you  seen  our  names  are  taken 
in  vain  together  by  some  scribe  in  Blackivood's? 
The  liberties  of  the  Press,  etc.,  etc.  (vide  Rouher 
et  Cie.  passim).  As  you  from  Ceylon,  I  have  heard 
from  Brazil.  H.  M.  Consul  at  Santos  [Burton] 
writes  me  renewed  congratulations  on  my  success 
in  bruising  the  head  of  British  virtue.  I  hope  Mrs. 
Burton  did  not  read  Richard's  remarks  on  Fans- 
tin  e, — et  pour  cause! 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Regret  and  The  Halt  before  Rome. 

2  The  essay  on  Matthew  Arnold's  New  Rome. 


57 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XXXI 
To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

September  i^th,  1867. 

SIR, 

I  have  received  your  letter  and  its  en- 
closure. I  have  not  much  time  for  correspondence, 
but  I  answer  it  at  once,  as  you  desire  my  advice. 
I  certainly  do  not  urge  you  to  resign  the  habit  of 
writing  if  it  gives  you  pleasure  without  interfer- 
ing with  other  things;  I  have  no  right  to  give  such 
counsel.  What  prospect  of  growth  and  advance  in 
the  art  you  may  have  is  impossible  to  say.  Less 
promising  verses  than  yours  have  perhaps  been 
the  forerunners  of  success,  and  more  promising 
ones  of  ultimate  failure.  A  man's  first  attempts 
can  never  possibly  afford  reasonable  ground  for 
pronouncing  decisively  whether  he  is  qualified  or 
disqualified  for  the  attainment  of  his  hope. 

One  thing,  while  sympathising  with  your  wishes, 
I  do  advise  you  against:  too  much  thinking  and 
working  in  one  channel.  Neither  you  nor  I  can 
tell  what  kind  of  work  you  will  in  the  long  run 
be  able  to  accomplish;  but  it  is  certain  that  good 
or  ill  success  in  this  matter  of  poetry  need  neither 

58 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

make  nor  mar  a  man's  work  in  life.  I  understand 
the  impulse  to  write  of  which  you  speak,  and  the 
pain  of  checking  or  suppressing  it;  nor  do  I  tell 
you  to  suppress  or  check  it:  only  not  to  build  upon 
it  overmuch.  To  fret  yourself  in  the  meantime 
with  alternations  of  hope  and  fear  is  useless  if 
you  are  to  succeed,  and  more  than  useless  if  you 
are  not:  I  always  thought  so  for  myself,  before  I 
had  sent  anything  to  press.  One  wishes  of  course 
for  success  as  for  other  pleasant  things;  but  the 
readier  we  hold  ourselves  to  dispense  with  it,  if 
necessary,  the  better.  I  am  not  old  enough  to 
preach,  but  I  am  old  enough  to  tell  you  how  I 
thought  at  your  age  of  this  matter,  which  of  course 
was  to  me  as  serious  an  aspiration  as  to  you  now. 
To  encourage  or  discourage  another  is  a  respon- 
sibility I  cannot  undertake,  especially  as  I  think 
one  ought  to  need  or  heed  neither  encouragement 
nor  discouragement, 

With  good  wishes, 
Yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XXXII 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Dec.  gth,  [1867], 

DEAR  PURNELL, 

Come  when  you  please  and  take  me  to 
Zrubra  say  Wednesday  at  any  hour — this  week, 
I  am  probably — not  certainly — disengaged  any 
evening.  Let  me  know  as  soon  as  may  be  if  you 
see  Dolores 1  before  I  do,  tell  her  with  my  love 
that  I  would  not  show  myself  sick  and  disfigured 
in  her  eyes.  I  was  spilt  last  week  out  of  a  han- 
som, and  my  nose  and  forehead  cut  to  rags — was 
seedy  for  four  days,  and  hideous. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

LETTER  XXXIII 

To  BRYAN  WALLER  PROCTER 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 

W. 
September  1st,  1 868. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  send  you  some  verses 2  written  a  day 
since  on  reading  Charles  Lamb's  Sonnet  to 

1  Adah  Isaacs  Menken. 

2  The   Poem  entitled  Barry   Cornwall   ["In  vain  men  tell 
us  time  can  alter"]  first  appeared  in  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette. 
October  2Oth,   1874,  p.    n.     When  reprinted  in  Poems  and 
Ballads,  Second  Series,    1874,  PP-  98-99,  the  poem  was  re- 
christened  Age  and  Sonff. 

60 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

you,1  and  remembering  what  you  said  (in  jest)  to 
Mr.  Bayard  Taylor  and  myself  the  other  day  about 
your  poetry  being  less  well  known  than  it  had  been. 
My  tribute  is  less  worth  having,  but  not  less  sin- 
cere; so  perhaps  you  will  take  it,  and  excuse  it, 
as  what  it  is,  an  impromptu. 

Yours  very  truly, 
ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXXIV 

To  MR.  SAMPSON  Low 2 

22a,  Dorset  St., 

W. 
December  2ist,  1868. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  shall  be  happy  to  undertake  the  Cole- 
ridge on  the  terms  proposed.  I  presume  I  shall 
also  have  the  selection  and  arrangement  of  the 
poems  in  my  hands.  It  will  be  a  more  congenial 
labour  to  me  than  the  Selection  from  Byron,  who 
is  not  made  for  selection — Coleridge  is.  In  my 

1  Lamb's  Sonnet  ["Let  hate,  or  grosser  heats,  their  foulness 
mask"]    originally   appeared    (under   the   title   Commendatory 
Verses  to  the  Author  of  Poems  Published  under  the  Name  of 
Barry  Cornwall)  in  The  London  Magazine,  September,  1820. 

2  Mr.  Sampson  Low,  of  Messrs.   Sampson  Low,   Son,  and 
Marston,  who  in  due  course  published  Christabel  and  the  Lyrical 
and  Imaginative  Poems  of  S.  T.  Coleridge.    Arranged  and  In- 
troduced by  Algernon  Charles  Swinburne.    London,  1869. 

61 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

eyes  his  good  poems  have  no  fault,  his  bad  poems 
no  merit;  and  to  disengage  these  from  those  will 
be  a  pleasure  to  me. 

I  can  let  you  have  the  work  in  less  than  three 
months  if  you  like;  I  shall  only  have  to  put  other 
work  aside  and  give  my  whole  attention  to  this 
for  a  time;  and  this  may  as  well  be  done  now  as 
later. 

Believe  me, 

Very  truly  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXXV 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

[1869.] 
MY  DEAR  HOUGHTON, 

What  a  wonderful  work x  this  is  of 
Browning's.  I  tore  through  the  first  volume  in 
a  day  of  careful  study,  with  a  sense  of  absolute 
possession.  I  have  not  felt  so  strongly  that  delight- 
ful sense  of  being  mastered — dominated — by  an- 
other man's  imaginative  work  since  I  was  a  small 
boy.  I  always  except,  of  course,  Victor  Hugo's, 
which  has  the  same  force  and  insight  and  variety 
of  imagination  together  with  that  exquisite  bloom 
and  flavour  of  the  highest  poetry  which  Browning's 

1  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 
62 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

has  not:  though  it  has  perhaps  a  more  wonderful 
subtlety  at  once  and  breadth  of  humorous  inven- 
tion and  perception. 

As  for  interest,  it  simply  kills  all  other  matters 
of  thought  for  the  time.  This  is  his  real  work — 
big  enough  to  give  him  breathing-space,  whereas 
in  play  or  song  he  is  alike  cramped.  It  is  of  the 
mixed-political  composite-dramatic  order  which 
alone  suits  him  and  serves  him. 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXXVI 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

Ball:  Coll: 
Oxford. 

April  25th,  [1869]. 

DEAR  MR.  MORLEY, 

I  should  like  to  review  Victor  Hugo's 
new  book  *  when  I  have  leisure,  if  you  would  like 
to  entrust  it  to  me  for  the  Fortnightly,  and  if  you 
do  not  want  an  immediate  article.  I  have  so  many 
things  on  hand  just  now  that  I  could  not  undertake 
it  for  the  next  month  or  two  with  any  confidence 
of  treating  the  subject  at  all  adequately.  Please 
let  me  know  if  I  am  to  think  of  it  as  a  paper  to 

qui  Rit. 
63 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

appear  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  or  not  My 
present  address  is  12  North  Crescent,  Bedford 
Square.  I  am  here  with  the  Master  for  a  day  or 
two  longer  only. 

Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXXVII 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

22«,  Dorset  St., 

W. 
May  17 th,  [1869]. 

DEAR  MR.  MORLEY, 

Here  is  the  little  pamphlet  *  of  Lan- 
dor's  of  which  I  spoke.  Thanks  for  sending  the 
cheque,  and  for  telling  me  about  the  words  in- 
serted. I  did  mean  to  say  that  I  thought  Shelley's 
allusion  was  to  the  evil  which  'was  wrought  by 
Christianity  in  its  working  days — not  meaning  of 
course,  that  I  held  it  per  se  an  evil,  or  in  any  sense 
an  unmixed  evil,  but  a  thing  which  historically 
considered  had  assuredly  done  evil  as  well  as  good 
to  the  world.  But,  of  course,  I  don't  protest  against 
your  right  to  Insert  the  four  or  five  words.  I  have 

1This  must  surely  have  been  the  Moral  Epistle  to  Earl 
Stanhope t  1795,  of  which  Swinburne  possessed  a  fine  copy. 

64 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

indeed,  candidly,  no  doubt  it  was  right  and  wise 
to  preclude  misrepresentation. 

I  shall  be  most  anxious  to  see  what  Carlyle  says 
of  Landor.  I  hope  his  views  of  art  and  life,  as 
well  as  politics,  will  not  distort  or  discolour  what 
ought  to  be  a  tribute  worthy  of  two  great  men. 

I  take  L'Homme  qui  Rit  as  a  room  in  a  great 
house,  not  my  favourite  room,  and  judge  the  peo- 
ple, not  as  English  actualities,  but  as  human  pos- 
sibilities. E.g.  Joriane,  though  un-English,  is  a 
subtle,  splendid,  and  I  think  in  other  times  and 
countries  a  truthful  study. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XXXVIII 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 

August  gtht  [1869]. 

DEAR  MR.  MORLEY, 

Thanks  for  the  note  announcing  pay- 
ment of  my  cheque.  I  should  have  answered  your 
last  note  at  once,  but,  with  my  habitual  careless- 
ness, put  it  by  at  the  time  and  forgot.  I  have 
been  far  from  well,  but  am  now  quite  right.  Lon- 
don and  summer  together  always  upset  me  more 
or  less,  and  I  have  been  much  harassed  with  busi- 

65 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ness  troubles  connected  with  lawyers  and  publish- 
ers, till  I  could  well  nigh  parody  Diderot's  prayer 
and  wish  the  last  of  the  one  lot  strangled  with  the 
cordon  d'entrailles  of  the  last  example  of  the  other. 
I  was  going  to  write  to  you,  as  it  happened, 
before  your  note  reached  me,  to  know  whether  you 
would  like  to  have  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  the 
firstling  of  my  forthcoming  book  * — now  for  the 
immediate  present  postponed — a  lyric  poem  of 
some  length  on  the  European  prospect  as  seen  from 
the  democratic  point  of  view.  Rossetti  wants  me 
to  bring  out  something  of  the  kind  at  this  moment 
when  it  might  tell;  but  as  I  hope  certainly  to 
publish  my  volume  of  national  or  political  lyrics 
in  the  next  autumn  season,  I  cannot,  of  course, 
guess  whether  you  would  think  it  worth  while  to 
have  it  as  it  were  on  so  short  a  lease;  and  it  must 
make  part  of  the  series,  though,  of  course,  stand- 
ing separate  by  itself.  If  you  let  me  know  that 
you  would  like  to  have  it — supposing,  of  course, 
you  find  it  otherwise  available — it  shall  be  sent  at 
once.  It  is  called  The  Eve  of  Revolution — an  Ode 
in  some  twenty  or  thirty  regular  strophes  or  stan- 
zas.2 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Songs  before  Sunrise,  published  in   1871. 

2  The  Eve  of  Revolution  did  not  appear  in  The  Fortnightly 
Review.     It  was  first  printed  in  Songs  before  Sunrise,  1871. 

66 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XXXIX 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

December  2ist,  [1869]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  write  by  return  of  post  to  say  how 
gladly  I  will  adopt  any  arrangement  made  by  you 
with  regard  to  the  reproduction  of  my  books 
abroad,  and  how  much  obliged  I  am  by  the  good 
office  you  are  sure  to  do  me  in  this  matter  as  in 
others. 

It  is  vexatious  about  Hotten,  but  so  is  every- 
thing in  that  quarter.  I  am  waiting  in  vain  to 
hear  anything  decisive  on  the  confused  matter  of 
money  due  or  not  due  to  me.  Morley  has  prom- 
ised the  proofs  of  Lisa  *  this  week.  Pray  do  what 
you  can  for  it,  so  that  I  may  not  once  more  be 
plundered  of  my  poor  but  honest  earnings.  God 
knows  I  cannot  spare  them,  and  it  would  be  a 
windfall  to  me  now  if  I  could  get  some  reasonable 
modicum  of  ready  money  to  meet  needful  de- 
mands, by  printing  short  poems  in  magazines  on 
terms  fit  for  me  to  deal  on.  Of  course  I  can't  go 

1  The  Complaint  of  Mono  Lisa,  printed  in  The  Fortnightly 
Review,  February,  1870. 

67 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

about  knocking  with  my  works  at  men's  doors  for 
acceptance.  I  wish  I  were  with  the  Xini  at  their 
meetings.  Perhaps  I  may  have  to  be  in  London 
after  Xmas.  You  know  I  want  new  chambers.  I 
should  like  to  ask  counsel  of  you  in  deciding  things 
when  we  meet.  There  is  no  rhyme  to  Dulcimer 
in  "Kubla  Khan"  (the  line  I  suppose  you  to  mean 
is  there — not  in  "Christabel").  C.  sometime*  /[ 
think  slips  in  a  line  without  a  rhyme  to  back  it — 
a  thing  permissible  to  the  Supreme  melodist.  How 
admirable  is  Tennyson's  new-style  Farmer — and 
how  poor  his  old-style  Idylls  of  the  Prince  Con- 
sort— Mort  d'Albert 

Please  remember  me  kindly  and  with  all  good 
wishes  for  the  season  to  Knight,  Marston  (pere 
et  fils)  and  all  our  friends  whom  I  have  so  long 
wanted  the  sight  of.  I  am  very  well  and  doing 
a  fair  instalment  of  more  or  less  desultory  work. 
I  have  not  heard  from  the  East.  I  return  Osgood's 
letter  with  thanks  and  remain, 
Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


68 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XL 
To  HUGH  REGINALD  HAWEIS 

Holmwood, 
Henley-on-T  homes. 
Sunday,  February  l$th,  1870. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  have  but  an  hour  ago  received  from 
London  your  two  notes,  and  the  enclosed  proof. 
I  have  been  several  months  out  of  town,  and  there 
has  been  some  delay  and  irregularity  in  the  trans- 
mission of  my  letters,  otherwise  I  should  have  re- 
plied at  once  to  your  first  note  of  January  20, 
expressing  my  sense  of  the  high  honour  done  me 
by  the  trust  of  a  charge  so  precious  as  the  transla- 
tion of  a  poem  of  Victor  Hugo's. 

As  it  is,  I  have  at  once  applied  myself  to  the 
task,  and  have  just  thrown  off  the  version  I  send 
you,  which,  inadequate  as  it  may  be  to  reproduce 
the  exquisite  charm  of  the  original,  is  at  least  as 
closely  faithful  as  I  can  make  it.1  I  hope  it  will 

1  In  January,  1870,  Haweis,  at  that  time  acting  as  Editor  of 
Cassell's  Magazine,  obtained  from  Victor  Hugo  a  poem  entitled 
Les  Enfants  Pauvres.  This  poem,  and  Swinburne's  translation 
The  Children  of  the  Poor,  were  published  in  Cassell's  Magazine 
for  May,  1870,  together  with  a  full-page  woodcut  and  two 
marginal  illustrations. 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

not  be  too  late  for  the  purpose,  and  that  the  delay 
will  not  have  caused  any  great  inconvenience. 
Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XLI 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

22a,  Dorset  St., 

W. 
April  i$th,  [1870]. 

DEAR  MR.  MORLEY, 

You  would  have  had  this  many  weeks 
earlier,  but  the  Rossetti  at  the  last  moment  put 
in  two  or  three  new  poems  of  importance,  and  I 
kept  back  my  MS.  to  insert  due  notices  of  them. 
I  have  now  touched  on  every  poem — in  fact,  given 
a  thorough  and  most  careful  analysis  of  the  whole 
book.  I  never  took  so  much  pains  in  my  life  with 
any  prose  piece  of  work,  and  I  hope  you  will  ap- 
prove of  it.  I  think  it  at  all  events  a  full  and  im- 
partial notice.1  The  book  will  be  out  this  month, 
so  that  in  reviewing  it  on  May  ist  we  shall  not 
be  reviewin^  the  unborn. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

Please  send  proofs  hither. 

1  Swinburne's   Review   of   D.    G.    Rossetti's   Poems,    1870, 
printed  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for  May,  1870. 

70 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


Holmwood, 
Henley-on-T  homes. 

September  gth,  [1870]. 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

A  thousand  thanks  for  your  note.  I 
hope  you  will  subdue  Hotten  at  once,  for  I  have 
out  on  Monday  (chez  Ellis,  of  course)  an  Ode  on 
the  Proclamation  of  the  French  Republic  thrown 
off  at  a  heat  on  the  arrival  of  the  news — written, 
copied,  and  despatched  in  two  days.  I  could  not 
wait  and  let  it  miss  the  nick  of  time  to  appear  in. 
So  pray  tackle  Hotten  at  once  if  you  can,  and  re- 
assure me  against  any  damned  annoyance  he  or 
his  lawyers  might  attempt  to  offer  on  the  occasion. 
I  have  already  sent  Ellis  the  proofs  corrected. 

Have  you  seen  the  statement  in  the  papers  that 
poor  Sala — I  forget  if  you  knew  him  personally — 
has  been  "subjected  to  terrible  and  painful  out- 
rages" by  the  mob  at  Paris  as  a  Russian  spy? 
In  haste, 

Ever  yours, 

CHAS.  DE  SADE. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  XLIII 


Holmwood, 

September  nth,  [1870]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

Thanks  for  your  note  and  despatch  of 
Ode.1  I  have  written  to  Ellis  to  get  you  a  review- 
ing copy  at  once,  and  am  charmed  to  hear  of  your 
undertaking  it.  I  shall  look  forward  eagerly  to 
next  Saturday's  Athen&um.  I  think  you  had  bet- 
ter withdraw  my  poem  from  Froude's  handling. 
Give  these  people  an  inch  and  they  take  10,000,000 
ells :  give  the  dog  Humbug  or  the  bitch  Morality 
a  bone  and  it  claims  the  whole  carcase. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

Remember  me  to  Knight  when  you  see  him. 
I  have  not  heard  of  him  for  ages.  I  hope  he 
may  give  the  Ode  a  shove,  as  I  am  politically  in- 
terested in  its  fortunes.  If  he  does,  will  he  kindly 
send  me  a  copy  of  his  notice? 

1  Ode  on  the  Proclamation  of  the  French  Republic. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XLIV 
To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Holmwood, 

November  iSth,  [1870]. 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

I  was  so  glad  to  get  your  letter,  and 
to  find  you  had  been  to  my  solicitors  and  told  them 
of  Hotten's  evasions  of  his  agreement  with  you. 
I  got  one  from  them  by  this  same  post  to  say 
that  Hotten  had  proposed  Tuesday  next  for  the 
long  evaded  day  of  reckoning,  and  also  proposed 
that  if  you  and  his  man  cannot  agree  then,  an  ulti- 
mate umpire  shall  be  chosen  whose  decision  shall 
be  final.  I  have  told  them  in  answer  that  the 
matter,  as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  rests  in  your 
hands  as  my  representative,  and  in  this  as  in  other 
points  I  will  be  guided  by  your  opinion.  But  my 
own  opinion  is  that  it  is  merely  a  fresh  device  for 
the  shuffling  off  the  final  day  of  settlement,  as  he 
has  already  evaded  his  previous  engagements.  I 
trust  to  you  to  do  what  you  think  right  as  to  his 
proposal,  and  whatever  that  may  be  shall  be  quite 
content  to  accept  it.  I  have  told  Ellis  to  send  me 
the  last  proofs,1  and  how  I  want  the  contents  ar- 
ranged. I  don't  think  he  will  consent  to  issue  the 

1  Of  Songs  before  Sunrise. 

73 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

book  without  legal  sanction.  The  lawyers  have 
advised  him  not,  while  the  arbitration  is  still  pend- 
ing. But  I  hope  that  will  soon  be  settled  now. 
I  shall  be  anxious  to  hear  of  the  event  on  Tues_- 
day. 

Ever  yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XLV 
To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Saturday  Evening, 

March  4th,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

By  an  accident  which  it  would  be  gross 
flattery  to  call  a  damned  one,  I  have  omitted  to 
appeal  to  youi  good  offices  till  I  fear  it  may  be 
too  late.  I  had  to  write  to  my  friend  Bayard  Tay- 
lor about  seeing  to  the  American  issue  of  my  forth- 
coming book  Songs  before  Sunrise  (he  having  of- 
fered his  services  on  any  such  occasion) — but  find- 
ing I  could  not  lay  hand  on  his  address  I  yesterday 
asked  Ellis  in  despair  to  do  what  he  could  for  it. 
I  had  quite  forgotten  how  admirably  you  had  man- 
aged the  Song  of  Italy  (which  belongs  to  the  same 
cycle)  for  me.  Now,  to-day,  I  go  to  Ellis  and 

74 


find  he  has  authorised  (as  I  gave  him  carte  blanche 
— indeed,  requested  him  to  do  anything  he  could) 
the  correspondent  of  a  firm  "Robert  Brothers" 
of — Hell  for  aught  I  know — to  see  what  they 
would  say  to  the  offer  of  the  book.  Then — by 
the  devil's  too  late  illumination  of  a  blind  soul 
that  wakes  and  is  damned — I  saw  that  I  ought 
to  have  asked  you  to  offer  it  for  me  to  Ticknor 
and  Fields  (wasn't  it?)  as  a  companion  to  the 
Song — or  rather  as  the  steamer  of  which  that 
was  the  tug.  For  this  is  hitherto  my  ripest  and 
carefullest — and  out  of  sight  my  most  personal  and 
individual  work.  Now — is  it  too  late  to  do  any- 
thing properly?  Ellis  says  in  twenty  days  we  shall 
have  the  answer  to  his  offer,  which  he  wishes  to 
recall  only  less  than  I  do.  Meantime — could  noth- 
ing be  done?  In  any  case  I  would  so  much  rather 
have  it  out  in  America  under  the  same  auspices 
as  the  S.  of  I. — for  a  dozen  reasons.  But  as  soon 
as  my  brains  and  fingers — both  hard  at  work- 
can  manage,  out  it  shall  and  must  come  here  this 
season — if  only  because  it  is  infiltrated  and  per- 
meated with  Mazzini — and  I  see  this  day  and  yes- 
terday the  beginning  of  one  of  the  periodical  evac- 
uations of  menstruous  and  monstrous  obliquy  from 
the  British  press  on  the  solar  track  of  his  name  and 
I  should  like  my  best  book  to  appear,  lovingly  and 
humbly  laid  at  his  feet,  just  when  the  mangy  mon- 

75 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

0 

grels  of  British  journalism  were  yelping  behind 
and  beneath  his  heels. 

Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XLVI 

To  WILLIAM  MICHAEL  ROSSETTI 

Holm-wood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
June  1st,  [1871]. 

DEAR  ROSSETTI, 

I  see  in  yesterday's  Guardian  an  an- 
nouncement that  "Miss  Christina  Rossetti  is  re- 
covering from  her  late  severe  illness."  I  hope  it 
has  not  been  such  as  to  cause  serious  anxiety  to  you 
and  yours,  but  I  cannot  help  writing  a  line  on  the 
spot  to  say  so.  Having  myself  been  more  than  once 
reduced  to  the  last  extremity  by  newspapers  (by 
this  one  repeatedly)  when  in  a  state  of  robust 
health,  I  am  not  always  alarmed  at  their  death- 
warrants,  but  one  would  always  like  to  be  reas- 
sured. If  you  have  really  had  to  pass  through 
any  such  time  of  distress,  I  need  not  try  to  put 
in  words  any  expression  of  my  deep  sympathy,  or 
of  relief  in  learning  of  it  as  past,  as  I  hope  you 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

and  all  yours  are  well  enough  assured  of  it.  Now 
that  one  has  time  to  breathe  and  think  after  the 
unspeakable  shocks  of  last  week,  I  have  one  idea 
on  which  I  should  like  to  consult  you.  If  Victor 
Hugo  comes  straight  over  here  and  to  London, 
in  consequence  of  the  vile  act  of  the  Belgian  gov- 
ernment, I  think  it  would  be  well  and  timely  to 
offer  him  some  token  of  recognition  and  homage 
on  the  part  of  his  believers.  It  need  neither  be  an 
exclusively  republican  nor  a  merely  artistic  dem- 
onstration; it  ought,  in  my  mind,  to  comprise  the 
names  of  all  such  as  would  be  glad  at  such  a  time 
as  this  to  pay  tribute  either  to  the  convictions  and 
conduct  of  the  exile  or  to  the  work  and  position 
of  the  artist.  I  have  written  to  Knight  in  reply  to 
a  note  asking  me  to  make  one  of  a  committee  for 
giving  a  dinner  to  the  Comedie  Franchise — which 
of  course  I  shall  be  happy  to  do — to  see  if  he 
thinks  that  truly  British  form  of  reception  would 
be  the  likeliest  to  succeed  in  this  case,  or  whether 
a  simple  address  or  deputation  would  be  the  best 
tribute.  Under  the  circumstances  my  one  desire 
would  be  to  make  it  as  emphatic  and  public  as 
possible,  both  as  a  recognition  and  as  a  protest. 
For  the  rest,  I  may  say  to  you  as  frankly  as  I 
would  say  to  Hugo  that  so  far  from  objecting  to 
the  infliction  of  death  on  the  incendiaries  of  the 
Louvre  I  should  wish  to  have  them  proclaimed  (to 
use  a  phrase  of  his  own)  not  merely  "hors  la  loi" 

77 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

but  "hors  1'humanite,"  and  a  law  passed  through- 
out the  world  authorising  any  citizen  of  any  na- 
tion to  take  their  lives  with  impunity  and  assur- 
ance of  national  thanks — to  shoot  them  down  wher- 
ever met  like  dogs.  A  political  crime  is  a  national 
crime  and  punishable  only  by  the  nation  sinned 
against;  France  alone  has  the  right  to  punish  the 
shedding  of  French  blood  by  putting  to  death  on 
that  charge  a  Bonaparte  or  a  Thiers,  a  Rigault  or 
a  Gallifet;  but  it  is  the  whole  world's  right  and 
duty  to  take  vengeance  on  men  who  should  strike 
at  the  whole  world  such  a  blow  as  to  inflict  an 
everlasting  incurable  wound  by  the  attempted  de- 
struction of  Rome,  Venice,  Paris,  London — of  the 
Vatican,  Ducal  Palace,  Louvre,  or  Museum.  But 
this  my  deep  and  earnest  conviction  in  no  degree 
alters  my  view  of  the  case  as  it  stands  between  Vic- 
tor Hugo  on  this  side  and  the  Belgian  government 
on  that. 

Ever  yours  affctly., 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XLVII 
To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

June  1st,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

I  am  much  obliged  to  you  for  thinking 
of  me  in  connection  with  your  project  and  shall 
take  it  as  a  great  compliment  to  be  rated  as  one 
of  your  committee.  I  must  come  to  London  be- 
fore the  Comedie  Franchise  leaves  it,  but  I  want 
to  stay  here  quiet  as  long  as  I  can  for  pecuniary, 
sanitary  and  other  reasons:  so  I  did  not  think  of 
moving  for  a  month  yet.  You  must  let  me  know 
when  your  affair  comes  off,  and  I  must  find  a  tem- 
porary shelter  for  my  roofless  head  (which  is  now, 
as  Shelley  says,  "like  Cain's  or  Christ's,"  so  far 
as  lodging  goes)  in  some  furnished  room  for  a 
week  or  so  when  I  come  up.  It  would  be  a  great 
kindness  if  any  one  could  find  me  one,  however 
remote,  from  which  I  could  look  out  for  "a  per- 
manency": otherwise  the  son  of  man  thath  not 
where  to  lay  his  head  or  any  other  part  of  him. 

If  Victor  Hugo  comes  to  London  at  once  in 
consequence  of  the  base  cowardice  of  the  Belgian 
government  in  denying  him  shelter,  I  wish  very 

79 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

much  that  some  other  reception  could  be  offered 
him  on  the  part  of  those  who  at  once  admire  his 
devotion  to  conscience  in  this  matter  at  all  costs, 
and  recognise  the  greatest  poet  of  our  age  in  the 
man  who  gives  this  proof  of  faith.  It  need  not 
be  confined,  surely,  to  men  who  agree  in  every 
point  and  detail  with  every  article  of  his  social 
and  political  creed:  but  as  a  protest,  a  tribute  and 
a  recognition,  it  would  reflect  on  those  who  should 
offer  it  under  the  circumstances  the  honour  which 
it  cannot  pretend  to  confer  on  the  most  illustrious 
among  living  men's  names. 

If  you  can  suggest  any  way  of  putting  this  idea 
in  practice  by  any  means — address,  deputation, 
dinner  (your  note  put  that  in  my  head) — I  am  sure 
that  many  men  of  high  mark  and  various  eminence 
would  join  whether  for  art's  sake  or  principle's. 
Your  help  would  be  a  great  favour  done  to  yours 
ever  affect'7 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

I  hope  you  are  not  suffering  from  illness  at 
present.  I  am  very  well,  though  the  black  cold 
weather  has  affected  my  throat,  etc.,  these  two 
months. 


80 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XLVIII 

To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

June  2%th,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

I  have  received  two  papers  from  the 
Committee,  but  the  meetings  announced  were  over 
before  return  of  post,  if  not  before  the  circulars 
reached  me.  I  see  in  to-day's  Times  that  the  8th 
of  July  is  named  for  the  day.  If  I  am  expected 
to  be  there  I  must  have  where  to  lay  my  head  the 
night  before  and  after.  If  you  can  find  me  a  har- 
bour of  refuge  to  be  taken  by  the  week  in  any- 
reasonable  quarter — I  don't  care  where — it  will 
be  very  kind;  also  if  you  will  tell  me  anything  I 
ought  to  know  about  the  arrangements,  tickets,  etc. 
Does  your  own  ticket  admit  two  friends  also?  or 
do  you  purchase  theirs  separately?  or  what?  I 
hope  it  will  go  off  pleasantly  and  I  should  like  to 
see  the  great  folk  of  the  C.F.  as  large  as  life  and 
no  larger.  I  want  to  see  one  of  their  performances 
first,  though,  at  least;  so  if  you  can  manage  for 
me  I  mean  to  come  up  early  next  week — say  Mon- 
day. I  shall  only  want  a  short  month's  lodging,  as 
I  am  going  to  Scotland  on  Aug.  ist. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

81 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XLIX 

To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

July  2nd,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

I  am  so  much  obliged  for  your  kind- 
ness in  looking  me  out  a  place  of  rest  when  you 
are  so  awfully  busy  and  tired  as  you  must  be. 
Salisbury  St.  would  suit  me  beautifully,  and 
though  the  terms  would  be  more  than  twice  as 
high  as  I  could  afford  for  a  "permanency,"  I  may 
venture  on  them  for  a  fortnight  or  three  weeks 
without  fear  of  a  financial  crisis.  I  hope  to- 
morrow to  call  on  you  in  the  flesh  and  hear  all 
that  has  to  be  heard  further;  I  shall  leave  by  a 
morning  train  if  I  can  conveniently,  and  drive  to 
you  from  the  station,  taking  my  chance  of  finding 
you  in  then  or  later. 

I  have  asked  my  friend  George  Powell  to  the 
Saturday  affair  and  he  has  accepted.  I  suppose 
that  it  is  to  you  that  I  should  "nominate"  him? 
I  hope  to  heaven  I  may  be  in  time  for  at  least 
one  evening  of  the  Comedie  Franchise.  I  did  not 
know  this  was  their  last  week,  and  here  have  I 
been  all  this  time  out  of  town  and  dying  to  see 
them  act.  Eyer  yours> 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 
82 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  L 

To  FREDERICK  LOCKER 

Holmwood,  Henley-on-Thames. 

August  4th,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  LOCKER, 

A  thousand  thanks  for  the  bit  of  Both- 
well1  just  arrived.  It  seems  admirably  correct 
considering  the  state  of  the  MS. 

I  send  the  Sestina,  Rizzio's  first  song,  sung  in 
Scene  I,  when  the  Queen  asks  for  one;  if  it  was 
left  here  as  I  supposed.  I  should  like  very  much 
to  have  the  whole  Poem  printed  as  you  suggest, 
but  you  know  it  may  be  years  before  I  finish  it 
on  the  scale  designed.  I  feel  at  times  crushed 
under  the  Tarpeian  weight  of  my  materials.  At 
the  least  computation  there  must  be  20  Scenes  in 
Act  II.  If  the  thing  is  to  be  done  it  must  be  done 
on  a  great  scale  in  every  sense.  Its  motto  must 
be  Caesar  Borgia's — Aut  Caesar,  aut  Nullus.  When 
it  is  finally  printed,  I  should  like  the  printer  to 
put  the  names  prefixed  to  the  speeches  in  full, 
instead  of  mere  initials  like  aQ,"  "R,"  etc.,  both  for 
sightliness  and  convenience.  Till  then  I  don't 
think  it  worth  while  to  have  the  corrections  made, 
especially  as  I  may  alter  and  add  again  and  again, 
tho'  on  the  whole  I  think  this  will  do  as  it  stands. 
When  they  send  me  the  MS.  back  I  can  correct 

1  The  First  Act  of  Bothwell,  privately  printed  as  an  octavo 
pamphlet  of  69  pages  by  Frederick  Locker. 

83 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

these  proofs,  and  that  will  be  enough  en  attendant 
to  do  for  the  text. 

I  wrote  a  bit  of  a  scene  yesterday  between  Mur- 
ray and  the  Queen;  it  is  the  drier  political  de- 
tails that  bother  me,  but  without  some  reference 
to  them  the  action  (and  consequently  the  passion) 
is  unintelligible.  I  study  Shakespeare  constantly, 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  especially,  to  try  if  I  can 
learn  and  catch  the  trick  of  condensing  all  this, 
and  cramming  a  great  mass  of  public  events  into 
the  compass  of  a  few  scenes  or  speeches  without 
deforming  or  defacing  the  poem. 

I  am  quite  well  now,  and  think  of  going  to 
Scotland  in  a  week  on  my  promised  visit  to  the 
Master  of  Balliol — (who  would  have  told  me  so 
10  years  ago  when  I  was  rusticated  and  all  but 
expelled?),  but  I  was  very  unwell  for  days  after 
I  saw  you.  My  father  came  that  night  and  brought 
me  down  here  next  morning.  Of  course  I  was 
very  much  vexed  with  my  own  folly  in  having 
made  myself  ill,  and  ashamed  to  think  of  my 
friends  knowing  it  was  my  own  fault;  but  I  trust 
to  keep  as  I  am  now  in  good  health  and  sense. 

Give  my  kind  regards  to  Lady  Charlotte  and 
"the  young  lady,"  *  and  believe  me, 
Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Miss  Eleanor  Locker,  afterwards  Mrs.  Lionel  Tennyson, 
and  later  Mrs.  Birrell. 

84 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  LI 

To  FREDERICK  LOCKER 

Holmurood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

August  gth,  [1871]. 

MY  DEAR  LOCKER, 

I  have  just  a  minute  before  post  time 
to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  my  second  proofs 
and  MS.,  with  many  thanks.  I  hope  they  will 
be  able  to  let  me  have  the  rest  by  the  end  of  the 
week,  as  on  Monday  I  must  be  off  for  the  High- 
lands, and  it  would  be  a  relief  to  have  the  ist 
Act  done  with.  I  will  keep  the  MS.  safe  for  you, 
as  you  say  you  would  like  to  have  it.  I  hope  you 
will  have  a  good  time  out  of  town. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — A  thousand  thanks  for  the  beautiful  copy 
of  my  Prelude?  which  is  like  enough  to  prove 
the  whole  Poem  and  Epilogue.  I  never  thought 
of  your  having  the  trouble  yourself,  and  am  very 
much  obliged. — A.  C.  S. 

1  Tristram  and  Iseult:  Prelude  of  an  Unfinished  Poem,  which 
was  included  in  Pleasure :  A  Holiday  Book  of  Prose  and  Verse, 
London,  1871,  pp.  45-52. 

85 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  LII 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Tummel  Bridge, 
Pitlochry, 
Aug.  24/A,  1871. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  shall  be  much  honoured  by  the  ded- 
ication of  your  book,  and  am  very  much  pleased 
at  your  having  thought  of  me  on  the  occasion.  I 
will  see  that  you  get  back  the  book  you  lent  me — 
I  had,  in  fact,  forgotten  whence  or  how  it  came 
into  my  hands.  I  have  some  thoughts  of  publish- 
ing separately,  in  some  magazine,  the  Prelude  to 
my  unfinished  poem  of  Tristram  and  Iseult — it- 
self a  separate  poem  of  some  considerable  length 
and  importance,  being  several  hundred  lines  long, 
I  think  I  should  ask  not  less  than  £50  from  the 
English  Magazine  in  which  it  would  appear;  and 
I  should  like  it  to  appear  simultaneously  in  Amer- 
ica, so  as  to  secure  the  profits  there,  whatever  they 
might  be.  Could  you  manage  this  for  me?  And 
if  so,  what  do  you  think  I  ought  to  expect  from 
the  Yankees? 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


86 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  am  staying  here  for  two  or  three  weeks  in 
the  Highlands  with  the  Master  of  Balliol,  and 
find  it  very  refreshing  and  good  for  the  health, 
having  a  good  river  to  swim  in  and  good  heights 
to  climb.  Browning  is  our  near  neighbour,  and 
within  distance  of  exchanging  visits. 

A.  C.  S. 


LETTER  LIII 
To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

October  loth,  [1871]. 

Private. 

DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  was  obliged  to  come  down  here  more 
hastily  than  I  had  expected,  having  been  very 
unwell  for  a  day  or  two,  and  some  fool  and  rascal 
having  (unknown  to  me)  again  terrified  my  peo- 
ple here  with  news  that  I  was  risking  health,  etc., 
in  town,  and  must  be  looked  after — so  my  father 
came  up  and  carried  me  off,  literally  out  of  bed, 
having  a  doctor's  word  that  I  wanted  country  air. 
I  told  him  I  had  business  (meaning  with  you) 
of  immediate  importance  to  keep  me  in  town  or 
bring  me  back  at  once.  So  if  I  am  wanted  I  must 

87 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

try — being  now  pretty  well — to  see  you :  but  I  sup- 
pose we  can  in  fact  arrange  by  letter  quite  as  well? 
I  have  only  to  repeat  that  I  leave  the  choice  of 
magazine  entirely  in  your  hands,  and  am  very 
glad  to  hear  you  have  settled  with  America. 

Any  cheque  or  other  missive  will  be  sure   (as 
usual)  to  find  me  here. 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LIV 

To  FREDERICK  LOCKER 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

November  7th,  1871. 

MY  DEAR  LOCKER, 

If  the  printer  wants  the  type  I  suppose 
he  must  have  it.  I  have  carefully  corrected  the 
revise;  but,  of  course,  as  you  must  see,  it  would 
be  preposterous  to  think  of  publishing  a  fragment 
of  a  Play.  Also  I  may  not  improbably  recast  and 
rewrite  part  of  it.  I  said  before  that  I  had  no 
view  of  finishing  it  soon.  It  will  be  taken  up 
when  I  am  "so  dispoged,"  as  Mrs.  Gamp  says, 
and  continued  slowly  at  my  leisure.  Very  likely, 
as  I  told  you,  it  may  be  years  in  hand  before  it 

88 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

is  (if  ever  it  be)  completed  to  my  liking  and  sat- 
isfaction. I  have  put  the  MS.  by  carefully  for 
you,  and  you  shall  have  it  when  you  please;  but 
as  yet  I  may  want  it  for  reference  on  revising.1 
Many  thanks  for  your  offer  of  Baudelaire's  letter. 
Of  course  I  should  like  to  see  it  very  much,  but 
I  should  hardly  like  to  rob  your  collection  of  it. 
I  have  his  inscription  to  me  of  a  copy  of  his  pam- 
phlet on  Wagner. 

With  best  remembrances  from  my  father. 
Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LV 

To  FREDERICK  S.  ELLIS 

Tummel  Bridge, 
Pitlochry, 
N.B. 

July   i8th,   [1872]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

Thanks  for  your  note  received  to-day.  I 
write  now  to  tell  you  that  Mr.  Jowett  has  just 
pointed  out  to  me  a  frightful  slip  of  the  pen  in 
the  Greek  verses  at  p.  61  of  my  pamphlet.2  The 

1  Swinburne  duly  preserved  the  MS.,  but  Locker  never  re- 
ceived it.    It  remained  at  The  Pines  until  the  poet's  death,  when 
it  was  sold  by  Watts-Danton  to  Mr.  Wise. 

2  Under  the  Microscope. 

89 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 


very  first  word,  u-oXXfc  ought  of  course  to  be 
7roXi>s.  It  is  a  slip  for  which  a  schoolboy  would 
be  flogged,  and  how  it  came  to  escape  not  only 
my  eye,  but  yours,  Mr.  Burne-Jones's,  and  Mr. 
Gibson's,  both  good  Greek  scholars,  who  saw  the 
passage  before  publication,  I  cannot  imagine.  Now, 
though  (as  the  Professor  of  Greek  says)  it  is  too 
late  to  hope  for  escape  from  the  comments  of  The 
Saturday  Review  (for  instance),  if  that  esteemed 
journal  should  notice  the  pamphlet,  or  my  sole- 
cism, I  must  beg  that  a  slip  of  errata  may  be  at 
once  inserted  in  all  remaining  copies,  and  that 
when  the  second  batch  of  copies  is  made  up  and 
the  misprints  at  pp.  32  and  72  removed  by  can- 
celling those  pages  as  we  agreed  on,  this  page  also 
may  be  cancelled;  meantime,  at  any  rate  I  must 
have  the  errata  inserted  in  every  copy  to  be  sold 
henceforward.  The  list  should  run  thus: 

Page  32,  last  line  but  one,  for  monsieurs  read  messieurs 
6i,line  19,  for  TreXXos,   read  iroKbs. 
72,    '      1  8,  for  Hugos'  read  Hugo's. 
do.    '     19,  for  Brownings'  read  Browning's. 

It  seems  a  very  small  thing,  but  coming  where 
it  does,  it  is  very  vexatious  to  me;  and  Profes- 
sor Jowett  is  of  opinion  with  me  that  the  best 
and  indeed  the  only  thing  to  be  done  is,  though 
late,  to  correct  it  at  once  by  this  the  only  means 
left.  So  I  must  beg  you  to  see  that  it  is  done  with 

90 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

all  the  copies  in  hand,  whether  at  your  place  or 
at  the  nominal  publisher's.1 
I  remain, 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LVI 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
November  2ist,  1872. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  have  sent  off  my  notice  of  Nichol's 
poem  2  to  the  printer  by  to-day's  post,  so  I  trust 
it  may  be  in  time  for  the  December  number.  I 

1  The  "nominal  publisher"  of  Under  the  Microscope  was  Mr. 
David  White.     The  actual  publishers  were  Messrs.  Ellis  and 
White.    Mr.  Ellis  had  been  asked  to  publish  the  pamphlet  by, 
or  at  the  suggestion  of,  D.  G.  Rossetti.     But  for  some  reason 
(probably  because  of  his  objection  to  the  afterwards-cancelled 
passage  regarding  Tennyson)  Mr.  Ellis  did  not  wish  to  assume 
the  responsibility  of  issuing  the  pamphlet.     Just  at  that  time 
the  negotiations  for  a  partnership  between  Mr.  Ellis  and  Mr. 
White  had  been  completed;  but,  yielding  to  the  strongly  ex- 
pressed wish  of  the  former  gentleman,  the  latter  consented  to 
the  appearance  of  his  own  name  alone  upon  the  title-page. 

2  Swinburne's  Review  of  John  Nichol's  Hannibal  appeared 
in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for  December,  1872. 

91 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

am  much  flattered  by  what  you  tell  me  about  the 
Princess  Orloff,  and  still  more  interested.  She 
must  be  a  person  of  most  commendable  tendencies, 
and  deserving  of  every  encouragement. 

The  cheque  you  speak  of,  whatever  its  amount 
may  be,  will  be  most  welcome  when  paid  into 
Hoare's,  as  I  am  at  present  in  a  fair  way  to  be 
pressed  to  death  (like  the  contumacious  compra- 
chico  in  L'Homme  qui  Rit)  by  unpaid  bills,  which 
really  worry  me  out  of  power  to  work  at  all  reg- 
ularly or  comfortably,  and  so  earn  wherewith  to 
discharge  them. 

My  poem  on  Gautier  is  in  a  metre  which  I 
may  call  "quarta  rima" ;  in  corresponsive  quat- 
rains like  those  of  my  Laus  Veneris,  except  that 
there  the  3rd  line  of  the  ist  quatrain  rhymes  with 
the  3rd  of  the  2nd,  and  so  on  to  the  end,  whereas 
here  the  musical  scheme  is  at  once  more  connected 
and  more  complicated;  for  the  3rd  line  of  every 
quatrain  rhymes  with  the  ist,  and,  and  4th  lines 
of  the  next.  The  metrical  effect  is,  I  think,  not 
bad,  but  the  danger  of  such  metres  is  diffuseness 
and  flaccidity;  I  perceive  this  one  to  have  a  tend- 
ency to  the  dulcet  and  luscious  form  of  verbosity 
which  has  to  be  guarded  against,  lest  the  poem  lose 
its  foothold  and  be  swept  off  its  legs,  sense  and 
all,  down  a  flood  of  effeminate  and  monotonous 
music,  or  lost  and  split  in  a  maze  of  what  I  call 
draggle-tailed  melody.  I  have  written  108  lines, 

92 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

27  quatrains;  I  expect  it  will  be  about  200  lines 
long  in  all.  I  am  going  over  the  part  already 
thrown  off  to  brace  up  the  verses — tighten  the  snaf- 
fle, and  shorten  the  girths  of  the  Heliconian  jade.1 
I  hope  to  have  it  off  my  hands  in  a  day  or  two. 
Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LVII 
To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

November  26th,  [1872]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

Since  I  got  your  note  asking  for  a 
"Stanza"  for  the  Athenaum  I  have  fallen  in  with 
one  2  among  my  unpublished  MS.  which  I  send 
you.  As  a  rule  I  do  not  care  to  send  any  verse  to 
newspapers  or  magazines  under  £10  or  £20,  not 
finding  it  worth  while,  and  not  wishing  to  have 

1  Memorial  Verses  on  the  Death  of  Theophile  Gautier,  printed 
in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for  January,  1873,  and  afterwards 
included  in  Le  Tombeau  de  Theophile  Gautier,  Paris,   1873, 
pp.  156-164. 

2  Before  Sunset,  printed  in  The  Athen&um  Nov.  30,  1872. 

93 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

my  name  hawked  about  like  that  of  a  Close,  Bu- 
chanan, or  any  other  hack  rhymester;  and  I  am 
not  yet  at  all  in  good  humour  with  the  Athenaum 
for  joining  in  the  marked  and  utter  neglect  of  a 
pamphlet *  which  I  see  they  now  find  convenient 
to  quote  and  borrow  from,  and  on  which  as  a 
piece  of  critical  prose,  I  value  myself  more  than  I 
usually  do  on  any  other  improvisations  in  that  line. 
But  as  the  application  comes  through  you  I  send 
what  I  have. 

I  am  in  very  great  want  of  tin  just  now,  having 
overdrawn  my  account  by  half  a  year's  allow- 
ance, and  being  overwhelmed  by  bills  and  dun- 
ning notes:  particularly  objectionable  when  one  is 
£200  worse  than  penniless.  I  am  at  least  that 
much  behind  the  world,  and  must  soon  raise  it 
somehow.  Can  you  suggest  any  way?  Say  by  pub- 
lishing somewhere  the  first  canto  of  Tristram  sep- 
arately? If  the  Prelude  was  worth  fifty  pounds, 
this  ought  to  be  worth  at  least  three  times  as  much. 
I  must  have  a  little  money  at  once — a  hundred  or 
two — and  surely  my  name  must  be  worth  some- 
thing in  the  market.  Give  me  what  help  or  advice 
you  can. 

I  see  with  disgust  that  King  of  Cornhill,  who 
I  was  told  was  reputable,  announces  an  edition 
of  R.  Buchanan's  works!  Faugh — it  will  be  im- 

1  Under  the  Microscope,  1872. 
94 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

possible  for  men  of  honour  and  character  to  pub- 
lish with  him  afterwards. 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LVIII 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 
December  12th,  [1872], 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  write  again  to  ask  a  little  favour  of 
you  in  the  way  of  business  which  I  hope  it  will 
not  give  you  too  much  trouble  to  grant;  if  you 
cannot  conveniently,  I  will  ask  Knight;  but  it 
is  only  to  call  for  me  on  a  legal  friend  who  is  now 
settling  my  affairs  with  Hotten  either  at  his  office, 
1 8,  Bedford  Row,  or  at  the  hotel  where  he  puts 
up,  The  Old  Bell,  Holborn,  some  evening  after 
seven — or  to  make  an  appointment  to  meet  him 
at  any  place  convenient  to  yourself  at  the  same 
time  of  day.  You  may  probably  know  Mr. 
Watts,  as  several  of  our  common  friends  are 
friends  of  his.  He  and  I  were  introduced  by 
Madox  Brown,  and  he  has  been  most  kind  and 

95 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

serviceable  to  me.  He  says  in  a  letter  just  re- 
ceived: A  discussion  between  a  practical  literary 
man  and  myself  of  your  affairs  with  Hotten,  would 
I  think  be  advantageous — especially  as  the  ques- 
tion is  so  mixed  up  with  that  of  selecting  the  best 
publisher  for  you.  This  discussion  would  be  sure 
to  run  to  some  length — indeed,  to  be  satisfactory, 
it  must  be  so,  and  had  better  be  done  after  busi- 
ness hours.  Now  you  and  Knight  are  about  the 
only  practical  literary  men  I  call  my  friends — and 
I  write  first  to  you  because  you  kindly  managed 
for  me  last  year  about  the  Prelude  with  Mr.  King 
— who  now  seems  disposed  to  undertake  negotia- 
tions with  me  or  my  representative:  and  Mr.  Watts 
seems  to  think,  in  spite  of  his  purchase  of  Stra- 
han's  stock,  he  will  be  altogether  the  most  desira- 
ble man  to  come  to  terms  with. 

Send  me  one  line  to  say  if  you  can  do  this  for 
me,  and  in  that  case  write  a  line  to  Mr.  Watts, 
giving  him  two  days'  notice. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S.  Many  thanks  for  the  despatch  of  the 
verses *  on — I  suppose  there  is  no  fear  of  their  be- 
ing before  their  time  and  ante-dating  the  appear- 

1  North  and  South,  printed  in  The  Fortnightly  Review,  May, 
1873. 

96 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ance  of  the  Fortnightly?  I  would  not,  on  any 
account,  have  any  dispute  or  misunderstanding 
in  that  quarter,  but  what  I  can  get  of  American 
profit  I  cannot  afford  to  throw  away. 


LETTER  LIX 

To  SIR  SIDNEY  COLVIN 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
January  i8th,  1873. 

MY  DEAR  COLVIN, 

Will  you  pardon  the  trouble  I  give  if 
I  apply  to  you  about  the  enclosed  dedicatory  son- 
net which  I  propose  to  prefix  to  my  Bothwell 
when  completed?  I  want  before  issuing  it  to  have 
the  opinion  of  some  Frenchman  who  shall  be  qual- 
ified to  judge  of  a  matter  of  poetic  execution,  and 
I  know  none  such  to  whom  I  wish  to  apply  as  I 
do  not  care  to  have  it  seen  by  Hugo  himself  or 
circulated  among  his  set  before  the  appearance  of 
the  poem;  whereas  I  know  that  you  have  among 
your  acquaintance  just  such  "Parnassiens"  as  might 
do  me  the  service  of  giving  sentence.  I  think  it 
on  the  whole  one  of  the  best  sonnets  I  have  writ- 
ten; but  wanting  to  make  if  as  good  as  I  can,  I 

97 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

am  not  quite  certain  which  to  prefer  of  several 
readings  in  different  lines.  In  the  second  line,  is 
the  phrase — 'vos  mains  d'ou  le  vers  tonne  et  luit' 
— the  right  one,  in  your  opinion?  I  like  it  my- 
self, but  in  so  short  a  poem  and  on  such  an  occa- 
sion I  do  not  want  any  phrase  to  have  a  look  of 
oddity  or  audacity.  In  the  next  line,  is  'Tout  ce 
que  mon  livre  a  de,'  etc.,  not  better  than  'Tout 
ce  qu'a  mon  esprit,'  as  I  had  thought  of  writing? 
'Drame'  might  be  better  than  'livre'  but  for  the 
jar  and  jingle  with  the  word  'flamme'  at  the  end 
of  the  line.  In  the  yth  verse  I  like  'Son  jour — qui 
luit  comme  une  lame'  better  than  'brilliant  comme,' 
etc.,  in  spite  of  the  repetition  from  line  2  of  the 
word  'luit'  which  does  not  I  think  jar  on  the  ear 
with  the  preceding  rhymes  in  -uit,  coming  just 
where  it  does  in  the  verse:  but  if  objected  to,  it 
might  be  supplanted  as  above.  I  suppose  'ap- 
parue'  may  pass  as  a  tolerable  rhyme  to  'abattue'; 
any  better  rhyme  that  I  can  think  of  (such  as 
Verne')  could  not  be  substituted  without  mofe 
sacrifice  of  idea  than  gain  in  sound.  In  the  pen- 
ultimate line  I  am  not  sure  which  of  these  two 
readings  is  preferable — 

'Fleur  eclose  au  sommet  du  siecle' 
'Fleur  rouge  eclose  au  sien  du  siecle' 

or  for  'au  sien'  one  might  read  either  cau  bord' 
or  'au  fond.*  I  fear  you  can  hardly  say — or  can 

98 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

you? — 'eclose  en  haut  du  siecle.'  It  looks  and 
sounds  wrong,  but  I  know  that  in  writing  prose 
or  verse  good  grammar  sometimes  seems  to  me  for 
the  minute  bad,  and  bad  good  (I  don't  know  if  you 
ever  feel  this  in  passing,  or  are  too  good  a  scholar) , 
though  I  am  not  conscious  of  being  capable  like 
Shelley  of  writing  'the  verdure  which  embraces? I 
I  am  afraid  these  verbal  frivolities  will  tax  your 
patience,  but  I  want  a  word  of  counsel  as  to  the 
execution  of  the  sonnet.  I  wrote  it  last  night 
before  going  to  bed,  and  have  just  copied  it  out. 
I  have  had  a  very  courteous  note  from  the  pub- 
lisher M.  Lemerre,  who  tells  me  he  hopes  to  have 
the  'Tombeau'  out  by  the  end  of  this  month.  I 
hope  to  heaven  they  will  not  make  such  pie  of  the 
Greek  accents  as  I  find  English  printers  usually 
do.  Meantime  I  am  not  minded — I  wonder  wheth- 
er the  Master  will  be,  as  he  was  in  the  case  of 
Saint  Arnaud? — to  bestrew  with  any  funeral  flow- 
ers the  new  tomb  at  Chislehurst. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

I  have  just  thought  of  another  variation  for 
verse  8 — 


'La  mer 


a  _    fmontants 
aux  Hots  •{  i 

^humains 


aux  mille  flots  qui  ronge,  brise  et  fuit,' 

au  flot  fatal 
99 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

but  I  don't  know  whether  if  in  any  of  these  forms 
it  is  an  improvement  or  not. 


LETTER  LX 

To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

January  3Oth,  1873. 


MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

I  am  in  want  once  more  of  your  friend- 
ly help  in  re  Hotten. 

You  will  see  by  the  two  sheets  of  letter  from 
Mr.  W.  T.  Watts  (who  is  now  acting  for  me  as 
my  lawyer,  and  whom  I  believe  you  know  as  a 
friend  common  to  us  two  and  the  Rossettis),  which 
I  enclose,  that  he  is  still  endeavouring  to  put  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  my  transferring  my  books  to 
Chapman  and  Hall  on  the  plea  that  I  made  over 
to  him  my  copyrights  in  perpetuity  by  verbal  con- 
tract. I  have  sent  Watts  the  notes  referred  to, 
taken  by  W.  M.  Rossetti,  with  an  extract  from 
a  letter  in  which  W.  M.  R.  mentions  the  agree- 
ment drawn  up  by  you  for  me  in  1866,  and  sent 
to  me  at  Lord  Lytton's  (I  was  sorry  to  hear  of 
the  poor  man's  death,  though  I  had  not  heard 

100 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

from  him  for  years).  But  you  who  managed  for 
me  about  the  Songs  before  Sunrise  know  all  about 
it  better  than  I  do,  and  can  assure  Watts  of  the 
non-existence  of  any  contract,  verbal  or  written, 
binding  me  in  any  way  to  Hotten.  This  is  of  course 
confidential,  between  ourselves,  and  I  send  you 
Watts'  own  writing  that  you  may  see  exactly  what 
is  our  immediate  difficulty.  Please  return  his  let- 
ter at  once.  I  do  not  send  the  last  sheet  as  it  re- 
fers to  other  matters,  except  that  he  says,  "Hotten 
means  fight  if  he  can  fight.  These  minutes  will 
shew  whether  he  can  or  not" — referring  I  sup- 
pose to  W.  M.  Rossetti's  notes  which  I  have  sent 
him  by  this  post,  though  they  only  refer  to  finan- 
cial matters — what  should  be  the  profit  due  to  me 
on  the  number  of  copies  sold? 

I  do  hope  you  will  be  able  to  call.  Make  an 
appointment  at  15  Great  James  Street  without  de- 
lay, and  give  us  what  help  you  can  in  the  way  of 
verification  of  statements.  You  see  without  my 
telling,  by  Watts'  own  expressions,  how  urgent  it 
is  on  all  accounts  that  no  time  should  be  lost  in 
extricating  me  from  these  impediments. 

There  are  also  other  matters  connected  with 
Hotten  about  which  I  want  your  advice — books 
of  mine  in  his  hands,  and  papers  not  relating  to 
this  matter.  I  always  look  to  you  in  need  to  man- 
age for  me,  and  have  never  found  you  wanting. 
But  this  matter  of  publishing  rights  is  all-impor- 

101 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

tant  to  me,  and  must  be  settled  with  no  more  of 
this  most  harassing  and  expensive  delay. 

I  adjure  you  to  come  to  the  rescue  of  suffering 
virtue  in  my  person  against  prosperous  vice  in 
Hotten's. 

And  am  ever, 

Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXI 

To  CHARLES  AUGUSTUS  HOWELL 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

February  6th,  1873. 

MY  DEAR  HOWELL, 

A  thousand  thanks  for  your  most  prompt 
and  kind  help,  which  was  the  more  necessary  as 
I  must  confess  to  you  in  confidence  that  I  had 
utterly  forgotten  till  you  mentioned  it  the  very 
name  of  Thomas,  and  have  yet  but  the  haziest  pos- 
sible idea  as  to  his  intervention  in  the  matter  of 
my  qualified  "reconciliation"  with  Hotten.  The 
matter  in  all  its  details  has  so  utterly  dropped  or 
been  washed  and  wiped  out  of  my  memory  that 

102 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

I  retain  merely  the  assured  conviction  that  never 
did  I  at  any  time  in  any  way  give  to  Hotten  the 
hold  upon  my  copyrights  which  he  ventures  to 
claim.  I  wish  you  would  write  me  a  word  remind- 
ing me  of  the  circumstances  referred  to.  Partly 
from  constant  ill-health  and  suffering  when  in 
London  of  late  years,  partly  from  other  multiply- 
ing and  distracting  subjects  for  occupation,  my  rec- 
ollection on  such  points  is  now  quite  misty.  I 
never  did  take  the  pains  I  might  have  done  to  en- 
grave on  my  mind  and  retain  in  my  memory  such 
details  of  business  or  other  matters  as  would  not 
naturally  fix  themselves  there;  and  consequently 
mind  and  memory  want  rubbing  and  refreshing 
from  without  before  they  can  see  clearly. 

As  to  books  of  mine  in  Hotten's  possession  I 
have  no  difficulty  in  remembering.  When  he  told 
me  he  meant  to  publish  Chapman's  Works  if  I 
would  prefix  to  his  edition  a  Critical  Essay,  which 
I  undertook  to  do,  I  lent  him  for  that  purpose, 
purely  to  save  him  trouble  and  facilitate  the  issue 
of  an  accurate  text,  all  the  early  copies  in  my  pos- 
session of  any  of  that  poet's  works — some  of  these 
of  great  rarity  and  value — which  otherwise  he 
could  only  have  procured  a  sight  of  at  the  Brit- 
ish Museum.  For  years  I  have  neither  seen  nor 
heard  anything  of  the  projected  edition,  or  of  my 
books,  for  which  I  now  wish  that  I  had  taken 

103 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

security  from  Hotten,  as  Lord  Houghton  did  be- 
fore lending  him  his  Blake.  I  want  to  know  wheth- 
er the  necessary  transcripts  are  not  now  made,  and 
in  any  case  to  reclaim  my  property,  which  I  cer- 
tainly did  not  contemplate  parting  with  for  five 
or  six  years  without  either  consideration  or  se- 
curity, when  out  of  pure  goodwill  to  his  under- 
taking I  freely  offered  him  the  loan  of  it. 

I  may  add  that  I  am  more  than  willing,  I  am 
desirous,  to  remain  on  amicable  terms  with  Hotten 
in  the  act  of  withdrawing  from  my  business  con- 
nection with  him,  in  spite  of  the  considerable  trou- 
ble and  expense  to  which  he  has  put  me  by  advanc- 
ing and  supporting  utterly  groundless  and  unjus- 
tifiable claims  on  my  property  in  my  own  writ- 
ings. As  I  have  never  had  to  bring,  and  assuredly 
never  have  brought,  any  charge  against  him  of 
dishonest  dealing  during  the  date  of  that  connec- 
tion, I  see  no  reason  why  we  should  part  on  hos- 
tile terms,  or  why,  for  instance,  I  should  cease  to 
deal  with  him  as  of  old  in  his  bookselling  capacity 
because  I  see  fit  to  put  an  end  to  my  relations  with 
him  as  a  publisher.  It  is  probably  not  worth 
while  to  touch  at  all  on  so  small  a  matter,  but  in 
full  confidence  I  may  do  so  to  a  friend  with  whom 
I  have  been  for  years  on  such  intimate  and  broth- 
erly terms  as  yourself.  I  think  he  may  have  some 
papers  relating  to  me  in  the  mass  of  his  collection, 

104 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

of  which  an  unscrupulous  man  might  possibly 
make  some  annoying  use.  You  know  that  we  have 
all  of  us — and  most  especially  myself — no  lack  of 
verminous  enemies  who  would  be  glad  of  any  se- 
cret handle,  though  never  so  slight,  for  the  throw- 
ing of  fresh  dirt.  I  am  as  indifferent  to  this  as  any 
man,  and  to  all  who  know  me  I  think  I  may  flatter 
myself  that  I  have  given  tolerably  good  proof  of 
my  indifference  and  equanimity  on  such  points; 
but  I  should  of  course  not  like  any  scrap  signed 
with  my  name,  which,  in  the  dirty  hands  of  a 
Grub  Street  libeller,  might  be  turned  to  ridicule, 
or  to  any  calumnious  or  vexatious  purpose,  to  fall 
into  such  hands  if  such  an  accident  could  be  avoid- 
ed. Neither  Hotten,  nor  for  that  matter  any  man 
alive,  has  in  his  possession  anything  from  my  hand 
for  which  I  need  feel  shame  or  serious  regret  or 
apprehension,  even  should  it  be  exposed  to  pub- 
lic view;  but  without  any  such  cause  for  fear  or 
shame,  we  may  all  agree  that  we  shrink,  and  that 
reasonably,  from  the  notion  that  all  our  private  pa- 
pers, thrown  off  in  moments  of  chaff  or  Rabelaisian 
exchange  of  burlesque  correspondence  between 
friends  who  understand  the  fun,  and  have  the 
watchword,  as  it  were,  under  which  a  jest  passes 
and  circulates  in  the  right  quarter,  should  ever  be 
liable  to  the  inspection  of  common  or  unfriendly 
eyes. 

105 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  am  making  gradual  way  with  Bothwell,  but 
am  yet  far  from  sight  of  harbour.  My  comfort 
is  that  if  ever  accomplished  according  to  my  de- 
sign the  book  must  either  be  an  utter  failure,  and 
still-born,  or  else  not  merely  by  far  the  greatest 
work  I  have  done  (being  for  proportion  and  con- 
ception out  of  all  comparison  with  Atalanta,  in 
weight  and  importance  as  well  as  width  and  vari- 
ety of  work),  but  a  really  great  poem,  and  fit  to 
live  as  a  typical  and  representative  piece  of  work. 
But  for  Hotten  I  should  have  been  at  work  on  it 
all  the  time  I  have  now  spent  on  this  long  scrawl. 

Pardon  the  trouble  it  will  have  given  you,  and 
believe  me, 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — I  hope  I  may  conclude  from  your  note 
that  you  have  left  Watts  fully  satisfied,  not  merely 
of  the  justice,  but  also  of  the  complete  security 
and  easy  proofs  by  irrefutable  evidence  of  the  jus- 
tice of  our  view  of  the  business,  without  need  or 
possibility  of  litigation  to  establish  or  to  impugn 
it? 


106 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  LXII 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 
April  nth,  [1873]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

As  you  like  the  last  poem  I  sent  you,1 
can  you  suggest  any  better  name  for  it,  or  does  the 
one  already  given  satisfy  you?  I  can  think  of  noth- 
ing better,  but  I  don't  much  like  it.  The  names 
of  the  flowers  would  make  far  too  ponderous  and 
polysyllabic  a  title  for  anything  under  a  South 
Sea  Idyl  or  epic.  By  the  by,  do  you  spell  the  first 
name  laurwstinus  or  laur^stinus?  I  thought  it  was 
the  first,  and  in  the  only  verse  where  I  remember 
ever  to  have  seen  the  shrub  mentioned  I  am  sure 
that  Browning  writes  "arbute  and  laurMStine";  but 
the  ladies  of  my  family  insist  that  it  is  laur^stinus 
or  -tine.  Grande  certamen! 

I  admire  and  enjoy  Pater's  work2  so  heartily 
that  I  am  somewhat  shy  of  saying  how  much,  ever 

1  North  and  South,  printed  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for 
May,  1873- 

2  This  refers  to  Pater's  Studies  in  the  History  of  the  Renais- 
sance, 1873. 

107 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

since  on  my  telling  him  once  at  Oxford  how  highly 
Rossetti  (D.  G.)  as  well  as  myself  estimated  his 
first  papers  in  the  Fortnightly,  he  replied  to  the 
effect  that  he  considered  them  as  owing  their  in- 
spiration entirely  to  the  example  of  my  own  work 
in  the  same  line ;  and  though  of  course  no  one  else 
would  dream  of  attributing  the  merit  to  a  study 
of  my  style  of  writing  on  such  matters,  I  suppose, 
as  Rossetti  said,  that  something  of  the  same  influ- 
ence was  perceptible  in  them  to  him,  there  is  just 
such  a  grain  of  truth  in  the  pound  of  compliment 
as  to  impede  the  free  expression  of  all  my  opinion 
as  to  their  excellence.  But  in  effect  they  seem  to  me 
throughout  as  full  of  original  character  and  power 
as  of  grace  and  truth.  The  unconsciously  theolog- 
ical sound  of  those  last  words — inspired  perhaps 
by  the  natural  influences  of  this  sacred  season — 
reminds  me  to  ask  what  you  think  of  Arnold's 
Literature  and  Dogma?  (by  the  by  I  should  have 
said  there  was  more  of  his  style  than  of  mine  trace- 
able in  Pater's).  I  am  personally  delighted  that 
a  critic  hitherto  regarded  as  so  safe  and  moderate 
a  free  thinker,  when  compared  with  "such  as  this 
republican,"  should,  while  dwelling  so  warmly  on 
the  value  and  significance  of  the  Bible,  have  so 
distinctly  repudiated  that  most  objectionable  "Per- 
son," the  moral  and  intelligent  governor  of  the 
universe.  I  do  not  despair  of  seeing  the  day  when 
any  reference  to  the  Bible  as  an  authority  will  be 

108 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

equivalent,  in  the  eyes  of  all  respectable  persons, 
to  an  open  avowal  of  atheism. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXIII 

To  JOHN  CHURTON  COLLINS 

3,  Great  James  Street. 

October  \\t\i,  [1873]. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  am  rejoiced  to  hear  that  you  think  of 
editing  Cyril  Tourneur,  and  shall  look  eagerly  for 
the  book,  as  I  have  done,  since  we  met,  for  your 
intended  article — in  The  Gentleman's  Magazine, 
if  I  rightly  remember.  My  own  idea  of  doing 
anything  in  the  matter  was  nipped  in  the  bud  by 
the  refusal  of  the  Society,  under  whose  auspices 
Furnivall  thought  it  possibly  might  appear,  to  re- 
print anything  which  had  been  previously  reprint- 
ed, this  being  against  their  rule,  so  that  both  Re- 
venger's and  Atheist's  Tragedies  stood  excluded. 
Do  you  know  the  rather  scarce  reprint  of  the  lat- 
ter in  a  volume  of  miscellaneous  plays  earlier  (I 
think)  than  the  first  edition  of  Dodsley?  But  in 
any  case,  nothing  would  be  more  shocking  to  me 

109 


than  the  notion  of  any  act  or  purpose  of  mine 
standing  in  your  way  when  employed  in  so  good  a 
work. 

I  hope  that,  of  course,  your  edition  will  include 
not  merely  the  two  already  known  tragedies,  but 
the  newly  unearthed  comedy  with  the  wonderful 
title  *  which  I  cannot  exactly  remember.  Furnivall 
gave  me  to  understand  that  the  proprietor  was  quite 
ready  to  allow  his  priceless  unique  to  be  at  once  re- 
printed— as  it  assuredly  should  have  been  before 
now.  I  would  give  something  to  see  old  Cyril's 
conception  of  a  comedy — I  can  almost  as  easily 
imagine  one  from  the  pen  of  his  sainted  Alexan- 
drian namefather.  I  suppose  you  can  tell  me 
nothing — I  never  met  the  man  who  could — of  the 
other  comedy  attributed  to  C.  T.  by  Lowndes,  with 
the  charming  title  of  Laugh  and  Lie  Down.2  I 
was  so  delighted  with  the  name  that  in  my  last 
Oxford  year  I  wrote,  in  three  days,  three  acts  of 
a  comedy,  after  (a  long  way  after)  the  later  man- 
ner of  Fletcher,  under  that  title;  but  I  shall  take 
good  care  that  this  one  never  sees  the  light!  I 
suppose  Lowndes  must  have  had  some  authority— 
though  I  am  not  sure  that  he  was  never  capable 
of  entering  (say)  a  pamphlet  by  Taylor  the  water 

1  The  Transformed  Metamorphosis  (1600)  :  it  proved  not  to 
be  a  comedy,  but  a  gnomic  satire  in  stanzas. 

2  This  also  proved  not  to  be  a  comedy,  nor  by  Cyril  Tourneur. 
Laugh  and  Lie  Down;  or,  The  World's  Folly  ( 1605)  is  a  prose 
tract. 

no 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

poet  as  a  play  by  Tourneur,  on  the  Macedon-Mon- 
mouth  principle.  I  suppose,  of  course,  you  will 
reprint  Cyril's  single  poem?  I  did  read  years 
ago  at  the  British  Museum  this  "Monumental  Col- 
umn" of  an  elegy  published  together  with  Web- 
ster's and  Heywood's,  and  think  I  thought  it  rather 
a  good  sample  of  that  sort  of  official  poetry, — but 
this  may  have  been  because  I  tried  to  think  so. 

I  am  troubling  you  with  various  "supposes"  and 
suggestions  which  are  probably  officious  and  super- 
fluous, but  you  will  set  it  down  to  my  interest  in 
your  subject.  I  heartily  congratulate  you  on  being 
the  man  chosen  to  revive — or  as  he  seems  to  have 
had  little  enough  in  his  own  day,  I  ought  perhaps 
to  say  confer  for  the  first  time  his  proper  fame  on 
one  of  the  most  original  and  keenly  inspired  among 
our  dramatic  poets. 

I  suppose  you  will  have  all  the  old  editions  to 
collate,  but  if  a  copy  of  The  Revenger's  Tragedy, 
1608,  in  my  possession  would  be  of  real  service  to 
you  I  will  gladly  lend  it  on  such  an  occasion. 

I  suspect,  however,  that  there  may  turn  out  to 
be  but  one  edition,  with  the  title-pages  variously 
dated  I6O7-8-9.1 

I  returned  to  London  a  fortnight  since,  and  am 

1  Swinburne's  conjecture  was  not  correct.  The  editions  of 
1607  and  1608  are  distinct.  No  1609  edition  seems  to  be 
known.  The  Revenger's  Tragedie  was  reprinted  in  1744  and 
1780. 

Ill 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

likely  to  be  in  town  some  little  time.  Is  there  any 
likelihood,  if  you  should  run  up  from  Oxford,  of 
my  having  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  or  our  friend 
Anderson  in  these  rooms?  In  any  case  believe  me 
Yours  very  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXIV 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 
December  l6th,  [1873]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

Many  thanks  for  the  cheque  for  £20 
just  received.  I  am,  as  you  have  heard,  negoti- 
ating through  a  legal  friend  whom  perhaps  you 
know,  Mr.  Watts,  a  friend  of  Rossetti  and  others 
of  my  near  friends,  for  the  future  publication  of 
my  works  by  Chapman  and  Hall.  The  terms  of- 
fered by  Mr.  Chapman,  he  writes,  are  "the  most 
liberal  he  has  heard  of";  the  details  I  have  not 
yet  received,  as  he  writes  to  know  first  of  all  wheth- 
er I  am  "open  to  negotiate"  with  that  firm.  Mr. 
Chapman  proposes  to  issue  a  cheap  edition  of  my 

112 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

entire  poems  in  the  same  form  as  his  cheap  edition 
of  Carlyle.  I  have  written  at  once  in  reply,  ex- 
pressing my  readiness  to  that.  You  might  be  of 
the  greatest  service  to  me  in  arranging  terms  as  you 
kindly  suggest — more  I  dare  say  even  than  Forster 
was  to  Dickens,  who  cannot  have  had  worse  luck 
than  I  have  hitherto  had  with  publishers.  (By  the 
by  I  am  wroth  with  Forster  for  having  as  he  says 
in  his  2d.  vol.  mislaid  a  letter  in  which  Dickens 
made  mention  of  my  infant  self,  as  I  should  like 
to  know  what  remarks  he  did  make  on  me  as  a 
small  and  not  usually  good  boy  of  9  or  10!)  I  don't 
know  at  all  what  sort  of  price  I  ought,  as  you  say, 
to  fix,  and  certainly  do  not  want  to  be  "too  mod- 
est." When  they  have  bought  the  stock  now  in 
the  hands  of  others,  which  has  to  be  done  first,  and 
accounts  squared  in  those  quarters,  what  should 
you  say  are  about  the  terms  I  ought  fairly  to  ask 
and  expect  in  justice  to  receive?  My  ideas  are 
still  vague,  and  any  help  in  the  matter  would  be 
very  valuable  to  me.  I  am  working  hard  and 
steadily  at  my  gigantic  enterprise  of  Bothivell, 
which  dilates  in  bulk  and  material  at  every  step. 
If  ever  accomplished,  the  drama  will  certainly  be 
a  great  work  in  one  sense,  for  except  that  transla- 
tion from  the  Spanish  of  an  improperly  named 
comedy  in  25  acts  published  in  1631,  it  will  be 
the  biggest  I  fear  in  the  language.  But  having 
made  a  careful  analysis  of  historical  events  from 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

the  day  of  Rizzio's  murder  to  that  of  Mary's  flight 
into  England,  I  find  that  to  cast  into  dramatic 
mould  the  events  of  those  eighteen  months  it  is 
necessary  to  omit  no  detail,  drop  no  link  in  the 
chain,  if  the  work  is  to  be  either  dramatically  co- 
herent or  historically  intelligible;  while  every 
stage  of  the  action  is  a  tragic  drama  of  itself  which 
cries  aloud  for  representation.  The  enormity  of 
the  subject  together  with  its  incomparable  capa- 
bility (if  only  the  strength  of  hand  requisite  were 
there)  for  dramatic  poetry  assures  me,  as  I  pro- 
ceed, more  and  more  forcibly  of  the  truth  which 
I  suspected  from  the  first,  that  Shakespeare  alone 
could  have  grappled  with  it  satisfactorily,  and 
wrung  the  final  prize  of  the  tragedy  from  the 
clutch  of  historic  fact.  But  having  taken  up  the 
enterprise  I  will  not  at  least  drop  it  till  I  have 
wrestled  my  best  with  it. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  LXV 
To  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

January  2ist,  1874. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  STEDMAN, 

I  have  just  received  your  letter  with 
the  very  graceful  stanzas  for  music  enclosed  in  it, 
announcing  and  accompanying  the  gift  of  the  beau- 
tiful volume  of  selections  from  Landor;  for  all 
which  I  thank  you  at  once  most  sincerely,  as  also 
for  what  I  have  not  received — possibly  through 
some  misdirection  or  miscarriage  which  may  yet 
be  rectified — the  note  of  two  or  three  months  since 
containing  your  article  on  Landor,  which  I  should 
much  like  to  see. 

I  congratulate  you  with  all  my  heart  at  having 
done  that  article  Fate  disappointed  my  once  cher- 
ished hope  of  doing.  As  the  property  of  Landor's 
works  is  vested  (I  understand)  in  his  friend  and 
biographer  Mr.  Forster,  who  told  me  a  good  many 
years  ago  that  he  designed  himself  to  edit  a  selec- 
tion from  the  verse  as  well  as  the  prose,  it  is  of 
course  impossible  for  me  to  intrude  on  his  ground, 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

and  would  be  improper  to  solicit  as  a  favour  the 
leave  which  Mr.  Browning  has  more  than  once, 
since  he  was  informed  of  my  original  intention  and 
the  only  reason  which  compelled  me  to  resign  it, 
kindly  offered  to  procure  for  me  from  Mr. 
Forster;  whose  selection,  when  it  does  appear,  will, 
I  hope,  be  an  improvement  on  the  system  of  ex- 
tracts given  in  his  biography  of  Landor:  which 
was  not,  I  think,  a  very  judicious  example  of  the 
representation  of  a  great  writer  by  specimens  and 
excerpts. 

I  am  truly  and  deeply  gratified  by  the  great 
honour  which  you  have  done  me  in  prefixing  to 
your  selection  verses  which  I  only  wish  were 
worthier  of  the  high  place  assigned  to  them  than 
I  can  honestly  hope  or  believe  them  to  be.  I 
never  thought  them  adequate  to  the  subject  in  any 
way  except  perhaps  as  an  expression  of  personal 
feeling,  which  may  be  thought  to  give  them  their 
only  worth  to  which  they  can  pretend;  but  their 
inadequacy  is  now  more  potent  and  flagrant  in  my 
own  eyes  than  ever:  though  this  does  not  diminish 
my  pleasure  in  seeing  them,  or  my  sense  of  obli- 
gation to  you  for  placing  them,  at  the  head  of  your 
beautiful  anthology;  from  which  I  only  regret  to 
miss  two  or  three  of  my  especial  favourites  among 
the  glorious  multitude  of  flowers  from  which  you 
have  chosen  so  many  and  so  well :  for  example,  the 
"one  white  violet"  (on  E.  Arundell),  a  fit  com- 

116 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

panion  to  Rose  Aylmer,  as  a  flower  of  life  might 
be  to  one  of  death;  the  "cistus" — 

Smoothen  thy  petals  now 
Her  Floral  Fates  allow; 

the  two  on  the  deaths  of  Ternissa  and  Epicurus 
("Ternissa!  you  are  fled!"  and  "Behold,  behold 
me,  whether  thou,"  etc.)  ;  the  quatrain  beginning 
"To  my  ninth  decade  I  have  tottered  on" — unless 
rejected  as  too  painful  to  students  who  love  his 
memory;  the  palinode  or  recantation  (so  to  call 
it)  of  the  Epitaph  at  Fiesole — 

Never  must  my  bones  be  laid 
Under  the  mimosa's  shade; 

and  the  lofty  and  pathetic  "expostulation"  of  Sap- 
pho— "Forget  thee?  When?  thou  biddest  me? 
dost  thou?" 

But,  above  all,  I  wonder  to  find  wanting  the  very 
brightest  (in  my  eyes  at  least)  of  all  the  jewels  in 
Landor's  crown  of  song;  the  divine  four  lines  on 
Dirce,  which  hold  the  place  in  my  affections  that 
those  on  Rose  Aylmer  did  in  Lamb's — 

Stand  close  around,  ye  Stygian  set, 
With  Dirce  in  one  boat  conveyed 

Or  Charon,  seeing,  may  forget 
That  he  is  old  and  she  a  shade. 

If  ever  verses  besides  her  own  were,  in  Sappho's 
phrase,  "more  golden  than  gold,"  surely  these  are. 

117 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  looked  again  and  again  through  your  book  in 
search  of  them,  unable  to  believe  that  I  had  not 
at  first  accidently  passed  over  the  page  which  they 
should  have  glorified.  There  is  the  whole  An- 
thology— all  of  it,  I  mean  what  is  really  composed 
of  flowers — distilled  in  its  essence  into  that  one 
quatrain.  These  too,  I  think,  might  have  found 
a  place  among  their  followers: — "The  leaves  are 
jailing;  so  am  I" ;  "Ye  little  household  gods,  that 
make,"  etc.  "Twenty  years  hence";  I  think  I  am 
not  wrong  in  saying  that  they  are  not  among  your 
Cameos,  but  I  have  not  time  to  look  again  before 
the  post  goes  out,  and  I  do  not  wish  to  let  one  day 
pass  without  thanking  you  for  the  gift  of  them.  I 
should  like  to  send  you  in  return,  if  the  publisher 
had  sent  me  any  copies  as  I  expected  and  as  he 
hitherto  has  not,  a  book  of  memorial  verses — Le 
Tombeau  de  Theophile  Gautier — to  which  I  have 
contributed  ten  little  poems  of  the  elegiac  or 
liriTvupiSiov  order — two  in  English,  two  in 
French,  one  in  Latin,  and  five  "Epigrams"  in 
Greek  after  the  Anthologic  pattern — a  polyglot 
freak  which  has  not  been  emulated  by  the  other 
contributors  in  French,  English,  Italian,  German, 
and  Provengal  and  other  dialects.  Lemerre  has 
published  it  in  a  very  pretty  form,  and  Victor 
Hugo  heads  our  list  superbly.  (I  should  like  to 
have  seen  in  your  selection  Lander's  late  verses 
to  him,  and  those  earliest  of  all,  which  I  have  just 

118 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

remembered,  written  at  school  on  Godiva,  and 
worth  all  that  have  been  written  on  her  since, 
however  exquisite — In  every  hour,  in  every  mood.} 
I  trust  you  will  prosper  in  the  good  and  enviable 
work  of  diffusing  among  Americans  the  knowledge 
and  love  of  Landor — they  must  be  one  with  all 
readers  worthy  to  know  him.  Pray  remember  me 
very  kindly  to  Mr.  Stoddard,  and  believe  me, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXVI 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

3,  Great  James  Street, 

W.C. 
February  2ist,  [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  have  received  the  enclosed  somewhat 
impertinent  reply  to  my  application.1  As  you 
know,  it  is  the  first  time  I  have  applied  for  a  new 
Print-room  ticket,  and  the  second  time  for  a  read- 
er's. What  may  be  the  meaning  of  an  irregular  re- 
newal I  cannot  imagine.  This  insolent  and  vexa- 
tious system  of  petty  annoyances  (for  precautions 

1  To  the  British  Museum. 
IIQ 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

they  are  not)  is  beyond  all  endurance,  and,  as 
Dante  said  of  Florence,  if  I  can  only  get  in  by  such 
a  door  as  this  I  must  remain  outside. 

Your  review  yesterday  was  excellent  towards 
me,  but  I  do  think  very  unjust  to  Chapman — above 
all  to  the  great  cycle  of  French  "Histories"  which 
overflows  with  genius.  Still,  you  gave  me  real  and 
great  pleasure  (not  for  the  first  time)  and  I  thank 
you  sincerely.  Can  I  hope  to  see  you  in  a  day  or 
so?  I  have  a  dozen  things  to  talk  to  you  about:  but 
my  eyes  are  sore  with  sleeplessness,  and  I  have 
endless  letters,  etc.,  to  answer. 

I  am  very  well,  very  busy,  and  very  cross. 
Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXVII 

To  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

February  2ydt  1874. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  STEDMAN, 

I  have  so  much  to  say  in  answer  to  your 
last  despatches  that  I  fear  I  may  be  tempted  to  ex- 
ceed at  once  the  bounds  of  the  post  and  the  limits 

1 20 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

of  your  patience  if  I  write  at  such  length  as  I  wish 
we  could  talk  together.  First  of  all,  even  before 
Thanksgiving,  let  me  say  that  in  my  opinion  you 
have  written  1  the  very  best  study  containing  the 
very  truest  estimate  of  Landor's  genius  that  has 
ever  yet  been  achieved.  The  only  drop  of  qualify- 
ing bitterness  in  the  pleasure  with  which  I  read 
and  re-read  it  rises  from  the  regret  that  it  could 
not  have  come  nine  years  before  instead  of  after 
he  went  back  to  the  Olympians;  for  I  remember 
well  how  pleasant  and  how  precious,  for  all  his 
high  self-reliance  and  conscious  avrapKeia,  the 
sincere  tribute  of  genuine  and  studious  admiration 
was  even  at  the  last  to  the  old  demigod  with  the 
head  and  the  heart  of  a  lion.  I  have  often  ardently 
wished  I  could  have  been  born  (say  but  five  years) 
earlier,  that  my  affection  and  reverence  might  have 
been  of  some  use  and  their  expression  found  some 
echo  while  he  was  yet  alive  beyond  the  rooms  in 
which  he  was  to  die.  The  end  was  very  lonely, 
and  I  fear  the  last  echo  of  any  public  voice  that 
reached  him  from  England  must  have  been  of 
obloquy  and  insult.  It  is  true  that  the  lion  at  whom 
those  asses'  kicks  were  aimed  was  by  no  means 
maimed  or  clipped  as  to  the  claws  and  teeth.  Did 
you  ever  see  his  vindication  printed,  but  I  believe 
not  published,  after  the  wretched  affair  which  end- 
ed in  his  angry  departure  from  England?  It  was 

1  In   Victorian  Poets,  pp.  33~7i   of  the  edition  of   1887. 

121 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

trenchant  and  conclusive,  including  as  it  did  a  let- 
ter addressed  to  himself  from  the  father  of  the 
young  lady  to  whom  his  fatherly  goodness  and 
charity  had  been  made  the  pretext  for  abuse  and 
slander,  thanking  him  in  the  most  fervent  terms  of 
gratitude  for  the  rescue  of  his  daughter  from  the 
society  of  the  swindlers  among  whom  she  had  fall- 
en, and  the  restoration  to  her  own  family  through 
Landor's  generous  kindness.  This  (as  perhaps  you 
know)  was  the  upshot  of  the  whole  matter;  only 
after  this  the  dear  old  Titan  could  not  contain 
his  divine  wrath  within  the  limits  of  Latin  verse, 
but  must  needs  burst  into  English  to  express  his 
opinion  of  the  woman  who  had  first  solicited  his 
charity  on  behalf  of  a  young  lady  cruelly  perse- 
cuted and  cast  off  by  her  own  parents — and,  having 
found  that  charity  ready  as  ever,  had  appropriated 
it  to  her  own  use ;  and  lastly,  on  being  detected  and 
disgraced,  had  responded  to  the  charge  of  fraud 
alternately  by  tears  and  prayers  to  be  let  off  with- 
out public  exposure  and  infamy,  and  by  threats 
to  make  the  charity  of  a  man  of  eighty-three  the 
ground  of  a  charge  almost  more  absurd  than  it  was 
villainous.  After  such  an  experience  of  more  than 
a  thief's  treachery  supported  by  more  than  a 
strumpet's  impudence,  a  milder  temper  than  that 
of  the  victim  whose  pockets  had  been  picked  and 
whose  character  had  been  defamed,  might  have 
been  expected  I  think  to  explode  to  some  purpose 

122 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

— above  all,  at  the  last  rascally  attempt  to  terrify 
"one  who  never  feared  the  face  of  man"  into  silence 
and  acquiescence  in  the  robbery  through  dread 
of  a  lying  imputation. 

Possibly  you  may  know  all  this  as  well  as  I,  but 
I  have  found  very  few  even  among  the  professed 
friends  of  Landor's  memory  who  either  knew  or 
cared  to  remember  the  exact  facts  of  the  case ;  and 
Forster  in  his  biography  has  slurred  the  question 
over,  as  I  cannot  but  think,  with  caution  some- 
thing more  than  legal  and  less  than  friendly.  It 
is  a  shame  that  the  most  faithful  and  generous  in 
his  friendships  of  all  men  should  have  none  to 
speak  out  for  him  now  without  shakings  of  heads 
or  hushings  of  voice,  as  though  to  lament  the  ex- 
istence of  some  deplorable  and  unmentionable 
thing,  when,  as  I  do  most  truly  believe,  the  only 
point  in  his  conduct  regrettable  and  possibly  blam- 
able  was  the  substitution  of  English  for  Latin  and 
print  for  manuscript  in  the  expression  of  a  just 
and  honourable  anger.  If  he  could  but  have  been 
content  this  time  also,  as  so  often  before,  with  the 
sufficiently  copious  and  vigorous  repertory  of 
terms  to  be  found  in  the  language  of  Martial  and 
Catullus!  I  did  not  mean  to  write  so  much  on  this 
matter,  but  if  you  do  not  know  the  details  it  is  well 
that  you  should,  and  even  if  you  do  you  will  excuse 
the  unpleasant  repetition  for  the  love  of  Landor's 
memory  which  I  know  that  you  share  with  me.  I 

123 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

send  you  his  Italian  dialogue  of  Savonarola  *  which 
had  never  been  published;  it  was  prohibited  in 
Italy  I  believe  through  priestly  influence,  and  the 
edition  remained  on  his  hands  in  sheets.  This  is 
one  of  the  copies  of  which  he  gave  me  as  many 
as  I  wished  to  take  away;  so  that  you  receive  it, 
as  it  were,  at  one  remove  from  his  own  hand,  hav- 
ing only  passed  through  mine.  You  will  be  amused 
to  see  his  unquenchable  prejudice  (if  prejudice  it 
be,  in  which  I  confess  to  some  share,  though  with- 
out knowledge  enough  to  go  upon)  against  Plato 
breaking  out  in  the  most  quaintly  incongruous 
time  and  place;  but  it  is  a  noble  "last  fruit"  of  the 
Italian  branch  of  that  mighty  tree.  He  told  me 
that  he  thought  he  wrote  Italian  quite  as  well  as 
English;  I  should  not  presume  to  say  that  I 
thought  he  did  or  did  not. 

Browning  has  some  of  Landor's  unpublished 
MSS.  that  he  has  promised  to  show  me  some  day, 
of  which  one  must  be  especially  interesting;  an 
"Imaginary  Conversation"  on  the  personal  immor- 
tality of  the  soul  between  themselves  and  two  other 
friends,  in  which  the  interlocutors  take  up  different 
grounds  for  attack  or  defence  of  a  doctrine  of  a 
future  state.  As  I  have  not  seen  it  I  cannot  say 
what  sides  are  taken  by  what  interlocutors;  but 
of  course  I  presume  that  Browning  is  not  made  to 
forsake  the  support  of  his  cherished  dogma.  (This 

1  Privately  printed  (8vo,  pp.  7)  in  1860. 
124 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

is,  of  course,  merely  my  own  conjecture  expressed 
in  confidence.)  Landor  himself,  I  know  from  his 
own  lips,  had  no  belief  or  opinion  whatever  on 
the  subject;  "was  sure  of  one  thing,"  he  said,  "that 
whatever  was  to  come  was  best — the  right  thing, 
or  the  thing  that  ought  to  come" ;  I  give  the  exact 
sense,  if  not  the  exact  phrase.  I  think  I  may  say 
that  he  would  have  agreed  with  me  that  any  mat- 
ter so  utterly  incognizable  is  one  on  which  it  is 
equally  unreasonable  to  have  or  to  wish  to  have  an 
opinion.  Browning  is  also  the  happy  possessor  of 
a  copy  of  The  Phoctzans*  which  I  have  never  seen 
and  want  to  read. 

You  are  wrong,  by  the  bye,  about  the  date  of 
the  first  collected  edition  of  Landor's  English 
poems;  a  volume  including  Gebir,  Count  Julian, 
Ines  de  Castro,  Ippolito  di  E/ste,  and  Miscellaneous 
Poems,  was  published  by  Moxon  in  1837 — five 
years  before  the  first  collected  edition  of  Tennyson. 
I  have  his  first  volume,  for  which  I  gave  two 
guineas,  Poems,  English  and  Latin,  1795;  it  con- 
tains a  good  deal  besides  satire,  tho'  that  is  perhaps 
its  best  part,  and  the  Epistle  to  Lord  Stanhope, 
which  I  have  also,  is,  I  think,  "something  remark- 
able for  a  boy  of  nineteen,"  singularly  polished  and 
vigorous.  You  see  by  my  cavillings  how  carefully 

1  From  the  Phoc&ans  was  printed  in  Poetry  by  the  Author  of 
Gebir,  1802,  pp.  12-36,  a  scarce  book,  of  which  Browning 
possessed  a  fine  copy. 

I2S 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  have  looked  into  your  essay  from  all  points.  I 
have  barely  room  to  thank  you  for  the  others,  both 
of  which  I  have  read  with  much  interest,  and  to 
add  that  I  send  you  by  this  post  my  own  copy  of 
the  Tombeau  de  Theophile  Gautier,  as  I  should 
like  my  share  in  that  book  to  come  under  the  eyes 
of  an  American  poet  and  scholar  with  at  least  some 
of  the  mispunctuations,  &c.,  corrected  which 
would  have  drawn  some  thunder  and  lightning 
from  Landor  on  the  head  of  the  French  printer 
and  all  his  nation.  As  among  so  many  contributors 
there  is  of  course  great  inequality,  I  have  taken  on 
myself  to  mark  the  best  among  the  contents ;  there 
are  pretty  verses  elsewhere,  but  those  I  have 
marked  are  really  fine  pieces  of  workmanship. 
Against  one  expression  I  could  not  resist  setting 
a  note  of  admiration  as  the  most  hopelessly  unin- 
telligible piece  of  jargon  I  ever  saw  in  any  lan- 
guage, and  written  on  the  most  luminous  of  all 
poets! 

I  see  you  share  the  general  opinion  as  to  the 
"utter  uselessness"  of  modern  Latin  (and  a  portion 
I  suppose  of  modern  Greek)  verses;  I  think  it  de- 
pends on  the  execution.  Good  verse  of  any  kind 
at  any  time  is  a  good  thing,  and  a  change  of  in- 
strument now  and  then  I  think  is  good  practice 
for  the  perfprmer's  hand.  I  certainly  care  very 
little  about  the  matter,  and  should  never  think  seri- 
ously of  claiming  place  or  notice  for  any  but  my 

126 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

English  or  French  poems  (the  latter  I  do  con- 
sider part  of  my  serious  work)  ;  but  Landor  was 
so  much  pleased  with  my  first  copy  of  elegiacs  ad- 
dressed to  him  that  I  might  have  some  excuse  if 
I  were  vainer  of  them  than  I  think  I  am;  and  my 
friend  and  former  tutor  Mr.  Jowett,  the  Oxford 
Professor  of  Greek  and  Master  of  the  leading  col- 
lege there,  has  expressed  a  very  gracious  and  flat- 
tering approval  of  these  on  Gautier,  and  notably 
of  the  Latin  choriambics.  I  confess  that  I  take  a 
delight  in  the  metrical  forms  of  any  language  of 
which  I  know  anything  whatever,  simply  for  the 
metre's  sake,  as  a  new  musical  instrument;  and 
as  soon  as  I  can  am  tempted  to  try  my  hand  or  my 
voice  at  a  new  mode  of  verse,  like  a  child  trying 
to  sing  before  it  can  speak  plain.  This  is  why 
without  much  scholarship  I  venture  to  dabble  in 
classic  verse  and  manage  to  keep  afloat  when  in 
shallow  water. 

I  hope  the  book  (with  Landor's  pamphlet  inside 
it)  will  reach  you  safely;  I  shall  be  curious  to 
know  what  you  think  of  it;  and  if  there  should  be 
any  notice  taken  of  it  in  any  American  journal  or 
magazine  I  should  very  much  like  to  see  it.  (This 
really  is  not  a  hint  or  insinuated  petition  begging 
for  such  notice  at  your  hands  or  any  one's,  and  must 
not  be  taken  as  such;  but  I  am  curious  about  the 
fate  of  this  book  as  a  unique  sort  of  production  in 
these  days,  and  take  certainly  a  quite  unselfish  in- 

127 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

terest  in  its  fortunes.)  I  am  very  glad  you  like 
my  elegy  on  Baudelaire;  I  wrote  it  with  very  sin- 
cere feelings  of  regret  for  the  poor  fellow's  un- 
timely loss,  which  gave  it  a  tone  of  deeper  thought 
or  emotion  than  was  called  forth  by  the  death  of 
Gautier,  with  whom  (though  from  boyhood  almost 
his  ardent  admirer)  I  never  had  any  correspond- 
ence; but  in  spite  of  your  kind  mention  of  it  in 
this  month's  Scribner's  Magazine,  which  I  have 
just  seen,  I  cannot  believe  it  worthy  to  tie  the  shoes 
(so  to  speak)  of  the  least,  whichever  may  be  the 
least,  of  the  great  English  triad  or  trinity  of  elegies 
— Milton's,  Shelley's  and  Arnold's.  I  am  content 
if  it  may  be  allowed  to  take  its  stand  below  the  low- 
est of  them,  or  to  sit  meekly  at  their  feet. 

I  have  just  finished  and  am  about  at  once  to  pub- 
lish the  longest  and  most  important  poem  I  have 
yet  attempted— a  historic  drama  of  almost  epic 
proportion;  but  I  have  no  time  or  room  to  try  your 
patience  further,  and  remain, 

Yours  very  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


128 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  LXVIII 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
March  6th,  1874. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  shall  be  glad  to  do  what  little  I  can 
to  assist  your  project,  and  if  my  name  is  of  any 
use  to  you  it  is  at  your  service.  But  I  know  noth- 
ing practically  of  committees,  and  heartily  agree 
with  the  disgust  you  express  for  the  vulgar  and 
fashionable  parade  of  worthless  pretensions  for 
which  they  usually  form  an  excuse.1 

I  fell  in  by  chance  with  your  first  article  some 
weeks  ago,  and  must  try  to  get  the  series  when 
complete.2  You  will  have  done  an  immense  serv- 

1  Miss  Rosalie  Foe,  the  sister  of  the  poet,  being  in  great  dis- 
tress, had  appealed  to  Mr.  Ingram  for  aid.  Mr.  Ingram  suggested 
the  formation  of  a  strong  committee  of  literary  men  and  women, 
under  the  shelter  of  whose  names  sufficient  money  might  be  ob- 
tained to  provide  a  permanent  endowment  for  the  lady.     Mr. 
(afterwards  Lord)  Tennyson,  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  and  others, 
promised  assistance.     However,  before  any  practical  steps  could 
be  taken,  Miss  Poe  died. 

2  A  series  of  articles  on  Edgar  Poe,  refuting  the  slanders  of 
Griswold,  his  first  biographer.    They  appeared  in  The  Mirror 
(London),  in  1873-4. 

129 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ice,  not  only  to  the  memory  of  an  admirable  poet, 
but  to  the  consciousness  of  every  one  among  the 
multitude  of  his  admirers,  which  has  hitherto  per- 
force been  harassed  and  fretted  by  the  involuntary 
recollection,  however  tempered  with  contempt  and 
loathing,  of  the  villainous  calumnies  of  Griswold. 
The  dog  is  dead,  I  believe,  is  he  not?  or  I  should 
like  to  see  combined  with  the  immediate  object  of 
your  committee,  the  scarcely  less  praiseworthy  ob- 
ject of  getting  him  cudgelled  to  death  in  default 
of  a  rope  and  gibbet.  Among  all  his  poisonous  as- 
sertions there  was  but  one — I  hardly  like  to  allude 
to  it — which  has  always  seemed  to  me,  if  one  were 
compelled  to  believe  it,  inexplicable  and  intoler- 
able, the  rest  even  if  true  would  not  be  damning 
accusations,  or,  however  lamentable,  beyond  all  ex- 
cuse or  comprehension  of  charity;  I  refer  of  course 
to  the  foul  allegation  of  an  attempt  to  extort  money 
from  a  woman  by  threats  of  defamation  in  return 
for  relief  received,  which  were  afterwards  retract- 
ed under  a  counter  threat  of  chastisement.  Incred- 
ible as  this  vile  story  is,  I  have  looked  eagerly  for 
a  full  and  unanswerable  refutation  of  it  point  by 
point,  which  I  hope  you  will  be  able  to  give.  I  do 
not  find  it  touched  upon  in  your  present  or  first 
article,  indeed  one  is  loath  to  touch  such  filth,  but 
as  long  as  what  that  polecat  biographer  has  left 
behind  him  is  not  swept  or  shovelled  away  finally 

130 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

from  the  grave  of  Poe,  it  must  offend  the  nostrils 
of  those  who  would  come  thither  with  offerings  of 
another  kind. 

I  cannot  undertake  to  offer  any  suggestion  as  to 
the  business  part  of  your  plans,  but  no  doubt,  as 
you  have  Mr.  W.  Rossetti  with  you,  you  will  not 
want  for  more  efficient  help  and  alliance  than 
mine.  I  wish  indeed  that  poor  Baudelaire  were 
alive  to  see  his  own  and  instinctive  contradiction 
of  Griswold's  villainies  confirmed  by  evidence,  and 
to  give  the  help  it  would  have  rejoiced  him  to  of- 
fer to  the  poor  lady  who  remains  to  represent  the 
name  which  he  honoured  and  made  famous 
throughout  France  by  his  own  labours.  Or,  if 
Theophile  Gautier  were  but  alive,  I  daresay  he 
might  have  answered  to  the  appeal. 

I  should  think  something  might  be  raised  among 
the  admirers  of  Poe  in  Paris,  if  anything  is  left 
of  the  old  set  of  artists  and  authors  who  learned 
of  Baudelaire  to  enjoy  the  genius  of  his  favourite. 
I  should  think  Mr.  Frederick  Locker  might  like 
to  be  of  service;  have  you  applied  to  him?  I 
don't  know  whether  he  is  in  town;  if  he  were 
I  would  look  him  up,  and  Mr.  Whistler,  who 
might  also  help  us  for  the  sake  of  a  fellow  South- 
erner. 

With  best  wishes  for  your  success,  and  sincere 
congratulations  on  the  good  work  you  have  already 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

done  for  the  long  and  grievously  outraged  memory 
of  the  first  true  and  great  genius  of  America. 

Believe  me, 
Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

I  am  writing  by  this  post  to  Mr.  Morris,  and 
have  commended  the  matter  to  him  as  to  one  of 
Poe's  truest  and  warmest  admirers. 


LETTER  LXIX 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
March  loth,  1874. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  send  you  a  line  to  convey  my  thanks 
for  the  great  satisfaction  given  me  by  your  answer 
to  my  question.  The  explanation  both  as  to  the 
nymphomaniac  habit  of  body  or  mind  which  seems 
to  have  regulated  the  relations  of  the  literary  ladies 
with  Poe,  and  (of  course)  as  to  the  villainous 
mendacity  of  Griswold,  is  precisely  such  as  I  al- 
ways looked  for  and  hoped  one  day  to  obtain,  as 

132 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

thanks  to  your  kindness  I  now  have.  I  shall  look 
forward  with  all  the  more  interest  to  your  forth- 
coming article  in  Temple  Bar.  I  am  also  much 
obliged  for  the  poem  *  you  enclose,  which  reads 
to  me  more  like  the  work  of  a  disciple  of  Poe's 
than  of  his  own  hand.  It  has  pretty  lines,  but 
none  which  have  that  peculiar  melody  scarcely 
ever  wanting  to  even  his  crudest  juvenile  work. 

A  third  reason  for  troubling  you  with  this  note 
is  that  I  only  remembered  when  too  late  an  omis- 
sion in  my  last  letter.  I  think  you  ought  to  be 
secure  of  any  help  that  may  be  in  the  power  of 
Mr.  R.  H.  Home  to  give  you,  in  recollection  of 
Poe's  most  generous  if  most  extravagant  praise  of 
him  as  a  poet  in  the  review  of  his  Orion.  I  don't 
know  the  address  of  Mr.  Home,  whom  I  met  but 
once  at  Dr.  Westland  Marston's  on  one  of  the  very 
rare  occasions  when  I  found  myself  in  "literary" 
society.  Of  the  "world  of  letters"  I  know  per- 
sonally so  much  less  than  little,  that  I  can  think  of 
no  further  name  known  in  it  which  might  be  sug- 
gested as  useful  for  your  purpose  except  Lord 
Houghton's,  wrho,  having  just  lost  his  wife,  may 
not  be  in  tune  at  present  for  any  project  of  the 
kind;  otherwise  this  is  certainly  one  in  which  he 
ought  and  might  be  expected  to  take  interest. 

1  Some  lines  by  A.  Ide,  an  American  writer,  which  had  been 
attributed  to  Poe. 

133 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Do  not  trouble  yourself,  if  too  busy,  to  acknowl- 
edge this  note  of  thanks,  and  believe  me, 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXX 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

3,  Great  James  Street, 
Bedford  Row, 

W.C. 
March  2$th,  [1874]- 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

It  is  so  long  since  I  wrote  to  or  heard 
from  you  that,  as  I  cannot  be  sure  of  rinding  you 
at  "Puttenham,  Guildford"  as  of  yore,  I  address 
to  Chapman  and  Hall,  who  of  course  know  where 
you  are. 

My  Bothivell  is  now  finished,  and  I  should  like 
you  to  see  something  of  it  before  I  ask  you  for 
counsel  as  to  the  arrangements  about  its  publica- 
tion. I  don't  know  if  it  would  be  convenient  for 
you  to  come  here  some  evening  early  and  hear  as 
much  of  the  mass  of  MS.  as  may  be  conveniently 
read  out;  but  if  it  is,  I  would  ask  you  to  come  and 
meet  a  few  friends  (of  mine,  and  probably  some 
of  yours)  to  whom  I  should  like  to  give  a  recita- 

134 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

tion,  next  week  or  that  after.  The  size  of  the 
book  is  as  far  as  I  can  calculate  almost  exactly 
the  length  of  Philip  van  Artevelde — i.  e.,  two  aver- 
age five-act  plays  in  verse.  This  is  the  calculation 
of  the  Master  of  Balliol,  the  only  person  who  has 
heard  it  or  read  it  right  through  (except  the  2  or 
3  last  scenes.)  I  want  to  have  the  proofs  in  read- 
iness in  order  to  send  to  him — as  he  has  been  a  very 
close  and  useful  critic  of  it  in  the  rough;  and  I 
should  like  to  have  his  last  suggestion,  as  I  am 
sure  the  poem  owes  much  to  his  former  corrections. 
(It  is  difficult  not  to  get  weedy  in  a  field  of  such 
size.)  I  would  apologise  for  bothering  you  about 
my  concerns,  but  that  you  were  good  enough,  as 
was  Jowett,  to  express  an  interest  in  the  project  of 
the  work  which  has  been  for  some  years  my  chief 
occupation;  and  without  knowing  something  of 
it  you  could  hardly  know  what  to  suggest  as  to  the 
disposal — and  since  receiving  your  friendly  note 
on  the  matter  I  have  always  looked  forward  to 
your  assistance  at  the  ultimate  issue — so  far  as 
an  opinion  given  of  what  I  ought  to  ask  (style 
Prudhomme)  and  how.  But  if  you  are  too  busy, 
don't  let  it  trouble  you  for  a  minute,  and  say  you 
can't,  and  I  shall  be  not  the  least  vexed;  only  on 
good  terms  or  bad  for  myself  I  will  have  the  book 
out  this  spring  and  have  it  off  my  mind,  and  be 
able  to  apply  that  again  to  something  else  than 
Mary  Stuart — who,  if  her  sex  were  satiable,  might 

135 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  think,  have  been  content  with  ruining  my  ances- 
tors by  the  simple  process  of  making  them  give  land 
and  life  for  her,  and  not  have  exacted  the  best  work 
of  my  brains  as  well  as  the  last  sacrifice  of  their 
heads. 

I  have  just  received  from  the  Master  (V.  H.1) 
his  photograph  of  this  month  by  Carjat — very  fine, 
but  how  much  older  he  looks! 

I  read  your  January  article  on  Mill's  Autobi- 
ography with  great  care  and  great  pleasure.  I  nev- 
er had  the  honour  to  meet  him,  but  ever  since  his 
Liberty  came  out  it  has  been  the  text-book  of  my 
creed  as  to  public  morals  and  political  faith. 
Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXI 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

April  list,  1874. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  do  not  know  any  one  to  whom  I  can 
advise  you  to  apply  on  behalf  of  the  Poe  memorial 

1  Victor  Hugo. 
136 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

volume.  M.  Mallarme  wrote  to  me  some  time  ago 
in  acknowledgment  of  the  reference  to  himself  in 
my  letter  to  Miss  Rice,  who  has  also  written  again 
and  sent  me  a  photograph  of  the  singularly  hor- 
rible monument.  The  only  one  durable  and  pre- 
cious is  that  which  I  am  sincerely  delighted  to  hear 
that  we  may  expect  from  you — a  full  and  faithful 
memoir.  Memoirs  are  generally  as  hateful  to  me 
as  monuments,  and  both  among  the  darkest  terrors 
of  death ;  but  in  this  case  the  poison  already  written 
on  Poe's  grave  demands  the  full  antidote  which 
you  have  yet  to  supply.  I  congratulate  you  on  the 
coming  honour  which  must  accrue  from  the  com- 
pletion of  your  noble  task. 

Have  you  seen  the  admirable  version  l  of  some 
of  Poe's  Marginalia  appearing  in  the  Republique 
des  Lettres?  I  saw  some  verses  headed  Alone  2 
which  seemed  to  me  not  unworthy  on  the  whole  of 
the  parentage  claimed  for  them.  The  "handwrit- 
ing paper,"  you  mention  and  your  article  on  Poll- 
tian,  I  have  never  received,  and  should  much 
like  to  see — the  article  on  Politian,  especially,  of 
which  I  only  saw  the  advertisement  which  an- 
nounced it  as  forthcoming — I  forget  where.3 

I  am  glad  Mr.  Tennyson  has  sent  a  letter  of 
sympathy  to  the  Committee,  it  is  a  just  and  grace- 

1  By  Mallarme. 

2  A  juvenile  poem  attributed  to  Foe. 

8  Mr.  Ingram's  article  on  Politian  appeared  in  The  London 
Magazine,  1874. 

1.37 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ful  act  of  recognition  on  his  part  of  one  who  was 
eager  in  doing  homage  to  him. 

As  to  the  Byron  monument  I  had  from  the  first 
silently  declined  (though  repeatedly  solicited)  to 
take  part  in  an  "inauguration"  of  which  the  pres- 
ent ruler  of  this  Empire  was  to  figure  as  the  prin- 
cipal aruspex;  not  considering  that  whatever  might 
be  the  defects  or  demerits  of  Byron's  genius  or 
character,  they  were  grave  enough  on  the  whole 
to  deserve  that  his  memory  should  be  subjected  to 
the  patronage  of  the  author  of  the  Revolutionary 
Epic;  and  had  the  memory  thus  oppressed  been 
Shelley's,  or  any  other  of  the  very  greatest  poets — 
Milton's  for  instance,  or  Shakespeare's — nothing 
would  have  induced  me  to  reconsider  my  point  of 
view,  considering  what  at  best  is  like  to  be  the 
upshot  of  such  a  plan.  But  when  the  one  man 
who  has  been  the  friend  of  Shelley  and  Byron  and 
is  now  on  friendly  terms  with  me  had  seen  fit  of 
his  own  accord,  and  moved  merely  by  a  sense  of 
wrhat  was  fitting  or  seemed  so  to  him,  to  propose 
my  name  without  my  knowledge  for  election  into 
the  committee,  of  which  the  first  intimation  that 
I  received  was  the  announcement  that  (subject  to 
my  consent)  I  had  already  been  elected  a  member, 
I  could  not  of  course  reject  the  courtesy  offered; 
but  I  accepted  it  wholly  out  of  respect  for  Mr.  Tre- 
lawny  and  in  acknowledgment  of  the  regard  ex- 
pressed by  his  proposal  of  my  name — a  regard 

138 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

which  I  naturally  would  on  no  account  have  ap- 
peared to  slight. 

Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXII 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

3  Great  James  Street. 

May  2yd,  [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  was  rather  disappointed  at  first  to  see 
that  Bothivell  was  not  to  have  a  notice  in  The 
Fortnightly  Review  for  June,  as  I  thought  it  was 
in  your  own  hands,  and  was  naturally  eager  to  read 
what  you  would  say  about  it;  but  I  could  wait  with 
the  most  perfect  equanimity  till  Doomsday  or  the 
twilight  of  the  gods  for  the  lucubrations  of  the 
"worthy  peer"  into  whose  hands  you  have  con- 
signed it;  for  though  of  course  I  should  really 
agreeably  value  the  public  (as  I  do  the  private) 
expression  of  your  estimate  of  my  work,  I  must 
confess  that  for  Lord  Houghton's  opinion,  and  the 
private  or  public  expression  of  it,  I  care  rather 
less  than  nothing;  though  you  need  not  tell  him 
so!  at  least  till  his  article  is  finished. 

139 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  need  not  repeat,  to  speak  seriously  again,  how 
much  satisfaction  it  gives  me  to  know  what  you 
think  of  the  work  to  which  I  have  given  my  best 
powers  and  my  most  earnest  labour  of  many 
months,  during  which  I  have  resolutely  kept  my 
hand  from  any  other  task.  If  you  speak  of  it  in- 
public  anywhere,  my  satisfaction  will  of  course  be 
all  the  greater.  But  meantime  I  cannot  resist  the 
temptation  to  say  that  I  wish  I  had  known  before 
that  you  thought  of  giving  Lord  Houghton  the  po- 
sition of  my  reviewer  in  the  Fortnightly;  as  I 
should  then,  in  defiance  I  doubt  not  of  all  etiquette, 
have  requested  you  as  a  personal  favour  to  me  to 
give  it  in  preference  to  any  other  writer  alive — 
say  Mr.  Robert  Buchanan.  I  have  never  shrunk 
from  attack  or  from  blame  deserved  or  undeserved ; 
but  I  must  confess  that  I  do  shrink  from  the  rancid 
unction  of  that  man's  adulation  or  patronage  or 
criticism. 

There  is  a  M.  Th.  Michaelis  just  come  to  Lon- 
don as  "representative  of  M.  Victor  Hugo"  (I 
quote  from  the  pencilling  on  his  card  left  on  me 
yesterday)  with  a  letter  from  him  to  me  which  he 
very  properly  declined  to  leave  on  finding  me  gone 
out,  and  which  of  course  when  I  have  breakfasted 
I  mean  to  rush  after  on  the  wings  of  a  hansom. 

Do  you  know  anything  of  T.  M.? 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 
140 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  LXXIII 

To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
July  8th,  [1874]- 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

Not  having  any  stray  song  on  hand  I 
have  just  sat  down  and  thrown  off  the  enclosed.  I 
pique  myself  on  its  moral  tone;  in  an  age  when  all 
other  lyrists,  from  Tennyson  to  Rossetti,  go  in 
(metrically)  for  constancy  and  eternity  of  attach- 
ment and  reunion  in  future  lives,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  I 
limit  love,  honestly  and  candidly,  to  24  hours;  and 
quite  enough  too  in  all  conscience. 

When  I  last  took  the  trouble  to  write  a  song  for 
present  use  (it  was  for  Hollingshed's  revival  of 
"The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"1)  I  priced  it  by 
advice  of  Sandys,  who  acted  as  common  friend  on 
the  occasion,  at  £50;  I  don't  expect  to  sell  my 
songs  usually  at  that  rate,  not  being  (thank  Phoe- 

1  Love  laid  his  sleepless  head,  printed  in  The  Examiner,  Dec. 
26,  1874.  Reprinted  in  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second  Series, 
1878,  pp.  133,  134.  The  lines  were  sung  by  Miss  Furtads  in 
the  character  of  Dame  Quickly  at  a  revival  of  The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor  produced  at  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  London, 
Dec.  19,  1874. 

141 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

bus)  a  Laureate;  but  of  course  you  know  I  can't 
afford  to  give  my  name  and  my  verses  for  nothing. 
I  should  like  of  all  things  to  meet  Sir  C.  Dilke, 
and  especially  under  your  auspices;  there  are  few 
men  whose  acquaintance  I  should  be  so  glad  to 
make.  But  I  don't  know  when  I  shall  be  in  Lon- 
don again.  At  present  I  am  a  close  prisoner  with 
a  badly  sprained  foot,  and  have  to  work  against 
tides  to  get  my  biographical  and  critical  article 
on  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  for  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica  ready  in  time. 

Yours  ever, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

[I  had  sooner  print  the  letter  than  the  poem!  It's 
a  charming  bit,  tho'. — Note  by  Sir  C.  Dilke.~\ 


LETTER  LXXIV 

To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 

Niton, 
Isle  of  Wight. 

July  loth,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  am  very  far  from  under-rating  either 
the  difficulties  of  your  task,  or  the  devotion  to 

142 


SWINBURNE'S  LETTERS 

your  author  which  must  have  impelled  and  sus- 
tained you  in  its  discharge;  but  I  still  think,  having 
now  before  my  eyes  the  revised  copy  of  your  text 
of  Chapman's  Plays  as  now  published,  that  in  the 
case  of  an  author  so  obscure  and  difficult  as  Chap- 
man at  his  best  must  always  remain,  even  when 
all  has  been  done  that  care  and  judgment  can  do, 
the  corruptions  and  imperfections  of  the  text 
should  have  been  more  fully  noted  (I  do  not  say 
except  in  the  more  palpable  cases  corrected  by  the 
always  hazardous  method  of  conjectural  emenda- 
tion) and  the  patent  and  crying  want  of  intelligible 
stage  directions  and  lists  of  characters  in  some  de- 
gree supplied.  In  the  second  play  in  the  volume 
it  is  frequently  impossible  even  for  a  careful  read- 
er to  make  out  the  speaker,  the  scene,  or  the  sense, 
and  on  these  points  at  least  we  are  accustomed 
to  look  for  some  help  from  a  modern  editor  who 
aims  at  something  higher  than  a  mere  reproduc- 
tion in  facsimile  of  the  old  text.  I  readily  and 
gratefully  admit  that  you  have  done  much  for 
Chapman;  but  I  cannot  but  think  that  much  re- 
mains to  be  done.  Meantime  I  sincerely  congrat- 
ulate you  on  the  valuable  and  important  discovery 
of  the  new  text  of  Hero  and  Leander,  of  which  I 
yesterday  received  the  proofs  from  Mr.  Chatto; 
who,  however,  has  not  sent  me  the  pages  of  the 
volume  of  Poems  from  48  to  57,  including,  I  sup- 
pose, the  last  part  of  The  Contention  of  Phillis  and 

143 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Flora.  Perhaps  if  you  see  him  you  will  be  kind 
enough  to  ask  him  to  let  me  have  these  missing 
pages  as  soon  as  he  can.  I  am  very  sorry  to  hear 
of  your  disappointment  about  Eugenia.  I  suppose 
of  course  you  have  tried  the  Bodleian  and  other 
public  libraries;  have  you  enquired  at  Cambridge? 
I  do  not  know  if  they  are  rich  in  books  of  that 
kind  and  period,  but  it  might  be  worth  looking 
after.  It  would  be  a  great  pity  to  leave  the  edition 
avowedly  imperfect.  Could — and  would — Mr. 
Grosart,  who  I  hear  had  thoughts  of  publishing 
Chapman's  Poems  on  his  own  account  before  the 
present  edition  was  announced  as  forthcoming, 
lend  any  help  in  the  matter?  I  observe  three  other 
items  wanting  in  your  list  which  seem  to  me  desir- 
able if  not  necessary  for  a  complete  and  critical 
edition  of  Chapman;  two  plays  attributed  on  very 
early  (if  not  contemporary)  authority  to  his 
hand — 

(1)  The  Second  Maiden's  Tragedy,  printed  in 
The  Old  English  Drama  (1820),  but  ought  not  to 
be  reprinted  from  this  text,  but  if  possible  from 
the  original  MS.,  which  would  add  greatly  to  the 
critical  and  poetical  value  of  your  edition; 

(2)  Two    Wise  Men   and  all  the  rest  Fools; 
omitted  by  Pearson  as  doubtful;  the  more  reason 
why  it  should  appear  now,  at  least  in  an  appendix; 

(3)  A  Satire  on  Ben  Jonson,  quoted  by  Gifford 
(I  think  from  the  Ashmolean  MSS.)  in  a  note  to 

144 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

his  life  of  B.J.,  beginning  "Great,  learned,  witty, 
Ben,  be  pleased  to  light,"  etc. 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXV 
To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

July  1 3th,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

Many  thanks  for  sending  me  the  proof 
of  pp.  48-54.  I  have  now  the  volume  complete 
up  to  p.  177.  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  there  is  a 
chance  of  Eugenia  turning  up.  I  quite  agree  with 
you  that  the  Homeric  margination  ought  to  be 
most  carefully  preserved.  I  have  just  purchased  a 
beautiful  copy  of  the  small  folio,  without  date, 
containing  twelve  books  of  the  Iliad  in  Italic  type; 
to  which  I  am  glad  to  see  you  have  reprinted  the 
noble  Epistle  Dedicatory,  but  not  (to  my  regret) 
the  curious  metrical  Address  to  the  Reader,  which 
follows  it,  nor  the  various  Sonnets  at  the  end  of  the 
volume,  nor  that  to  Queen  Anne  immediately  pre- 
fixed to  the  translation.  I  should  wish  myself  to 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

see  all  the  various  versions  of  the  Iliad  published 
in  parts  before  the  completion  of  the  work  reprint- 
ed side  by  side,  or  at  least  all  the  different  readings 
given  and  dated.  This  would  add  greatly  to  the 
value  of  the  edition  in  the  eyes  of  all  serious  stu- 
dents of  English  poetry;  and  to  none  others,  I  sus- 
pect, will  any  edition  of  Chapman  ever  be  likely 
to  address  itself  with  any  chance  of  success. 
I  remain, 

tYours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXVI 
To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton, 

Isle  of  Wight. 

July  igth,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

Thanks  for  the  additional  proofs.  I  see 
you  (or  the  printer,  is  it?)  put  a  query  to  the  word 
renowmed,  which  is  right,  being  a  genuine  older 
form  of  renowned.  I  shall  be  obliged  if  you  would 
send  me  the  actual  words  of  the  contemporary  ac- 

146 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

count  given  of  the  offensive  passage  cancelled  in 
Act  2  of  Byron's  Tragedy*  The  fact  and  the  rea- 
son for  it  I  remember,  but  your  note  which  takes 
for  granted  that  all  readers  will  have  the  story 
at  their  fingers'  ends  will  be  unintelligible  as  it 
stands  to  all  but  special  students.  I  am  happy  to 
hear  that  you  will  give  entire  the  first  partial 
versions  of  the  Iliad;  it  will  add  greatly  to  the  value 

1  The  most  interesting,  and  by  no  means  unimportant,  textual 
variant  to  which  Swinburne  refers,  may  be  observed  upon 
making  a  comparison  of  different  copies  of  the  First,  1608, 
Quarto  of  The  Conspiracie  and  Tragedie  of  Charles  Duke  of 
Byron. 

The  first  of  the  two  plays,  Byrons  Conspiracies  was  with- 
drawn from  the  stage  at  the  instance  of  the  French  Ambassador, 
and,  together  with  the  second  play,  Byrons  Tragedie,  underwent 
a  compulsory  emendation  before  being  committed  to  the  Press. 
Hence  Chapman's  plaintive  reference  to  them  as  'these  poore 
dismembered  Poems1  in  his  Dedication  to  the  Walsinghams. 

In  the  first  issued  copies  of  the  Quarto  of  1608,  at  Sig.  H  2 

(recto,  the  fifth  line  of  Byron's  speech  reads: 

So  long  as  idle  and  ridiculus  King[s\. 
In  later  issued  copies  of  this  Quarto  the  line  reads: 
So  long  as  such  as  he. 

The  earlier  and  longer  line,  which  is  far  more  forcible,  and 
is  moreover  metrically  correct,  is  of  course  the  true  reading. 
Doubtless  some  nervous  individual  in  the  printer's  office  ob- 
served the  line,  and  perceived  the  danger  of  its  being  stupidly 
regarded  as  a  reference  to  His  Sacred  Majesty  King  James. 
Hence  its  removal,  and  the  substitution  of  the  weak  half-line 
in  its  stead. 

When  reprinting  his  two  tragedies  in  the  Second  Quarto  of 
1625,  Chapman  replaced  the  original  reading  [Sig.  H  I  recto]. 

147 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

of  the  edition.  I  shall  not  attempt  anything  like 
a  memoir  of  Chapman;  my  design  is  simply  to 
write  a  short  critical  essay  on  his  genius  and  works, 
such  as  I  have  written  before  now  on  Byron  and 
Coleridge  (whose  admirable  remarks  on  the  Ho- 
mer, to  which  you  advert,  I  know  from  of  old,  and 
shall  probably  refer  to). 

With  renewed  thanks, 

Believe  me,  yours  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXVIB 

*  >  *:"      . 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

The  Orchard, 
Niton, 

Isle  of  Wight. 

July  2Oth,  1874. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  have  read  at  last,  under  the  right  aus- 
pices of  sea  and  sun  and  flowers  and  solitude, 
Quatrevingt-Treize,  and  am  disposed  to  agree  with 
you  that  it  is  (at  least  from  some  points  of  view) 
the  most  divinely  beautiful  work  of  the  great  Mas- 
ter, who  has  written  me  since  I  last  heard  from 
you  such  a  letter  in  acknowledgment  of  the  Dedi- 
cation of  Bothwell  as  I  should  like  to  shew  you, 

148 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

but  have  not  the  face  to  transcribe  or  quote.  Per- 
haps you  know  that  we  are  promised  Les  Quatre 
Vents  de  I'Esprit  for  the  autumn ;  if  you  can  spare 
the  post  to  anybody,  I  put  in  my  appeal  to  be 
given  (in  default  of  yourself)  the  office  of  re- 
viewing it — as  far  as  may  be  possible. 

I  was  on  the  whole  agreeably  surprised  on  read- 
ing Lord  Houghton's  notice  of  Bothivell.  Tho' 
he  writes  to  me  that  he  wanted  time  and  power 
to  do  it  justice,  I  found  it  more  thorough  and  care- 
ful (in  a  sort)  than  I  expected.  But  if  you  still 
retain  any  intention  of  noticing  it,  that  will  of 
course  be  a  matter  of  very  different  interest  and 
satisfaction  to  me. 

I  direct  to  Chapman  and  Hall  to  make  sure  of 
you,  tho'  I  suppose  "Puttenham,  Guildford"  would 
do  as  well?  My  own  address  is  as  above  for  two 
months  to  come. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — Apropos  de  bottes — have  you  read,  and  if 
so  what  do  you  think  of,  G.  Flaubert's  St.  An- 
tony? I  have  been  reading  it  with  very  consider- 
able interest  and  admiration. 


149 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  LXXVIII 
To MACKENZIE, 

The  Orchard, 
Niton, 

Isle  of  Wight. 

July  list,  [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  MACKENZIE, 

Messrs.  Chatto  and  Windus  have  for- 
warded to  me  here  your  note  of  the  22nd.  I  need 
not  tell  you  how  much  I  shall  value  the  MS.  you 
were  kind  enough  to  promise  me.  If  you  think  it 
safe  to  send  so  far — and  it  is  certainly  too  precious 
a  thing  to  be  lightly  allowed  to  run  any  risk — my 
address  will  be  as  above  for  the  next  six  weeks. 
But,  in  the  name  of  our  common  reverence  and 
affection  for  Landor,  let  me  conjure  you  not  to 
inflict  on  me  the  discredit  by  anticipation  implied 
in  the  title  of  future  Laureate;  an  office  for  which 
I  expect  to  see  all  the  poeticules  of  New  Grub 
Street  pulling  caps  after  the  death  of  Tennyson, 
till  the  laurel  (or  cabbage  wreath)  shall  descend 
on  the  deserving  brows  of  the  Poet  Close  or  the 

150 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Bard  Buchanan.  For  myself,  I  can  only  say  of  that 
office  what  Landor  said — 

That  inexpert  was  always  I 
To  toss  the  litter  of  Westphalian  swine 
From  under  human  to  above  divine. 

With  many  thanks, 
Yours  ever  sincerely  in  the  faith, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXIX 
To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Aug.  $th,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  am  very  much  obliged  by  your  kind- 
ness in  forwarding  to  me  your  Memoir  of  Chap- 
man with  the  various  prefaces  of  Messrs.  Hooper 
and  Elze.  Of  the  latter  editor's  preface  to  Al- 
phonsus,  the  pages  23,  24,  have  slipt  out;  perhaps 
you  have  the  leaf  by  you:  the  gap  occurs  at  an 
interesting  point  of  this  curious  essay,  which  I 
should  like  to  read  in  full. 

I  merely  mentioned  to  Mr.  Chatto  that  I  did  not 
know  the  date  of  Chapman's  death,  and  thought  it 
hardly  worth  while  to  trouble  you  with  an  express 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

note  on  the  matter.  I  am  all  the  more  grateful  for 
the  copious  help  you  have  sent  me  in  reply.  My 
acknowledgment  of  the  leaf  out  of  the  Memoir 
sent  before,  I  desired  Chatto  to  make  to  you  in 
my  name.  I  shall  be  very  happy  to  meet  you  if 
you  have  an  opportunity  of  calling  here  this  or 
next  week,  when  I  hope  we  make  acquaintance  in 
person  over  the  text  of  the  poet  on  whom  we  are 
at  work  in  common. 

Believe  me,  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE, 


LETTER  LXXX 
To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Aug.  igth,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

Many  thanks  for  your  kind  pfesent  of 
books,  and  also  for  Mr.  Collier's  list.  I  am  de- 
lighted to  find  that  with  one  exception  he  has  failed 
to  trace  any  of  those  extracts  which  I  could  not 
verify,  and  surprised  to  find  that  he  has  failed  to 
trace  two  or  three  which  I  have  verified  in  no 
more  recondite  poem  than  Hero  and  Leander.  I 
would  send  you  my  corrections  of  the  text  of  the 

152 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

poems,  to  which  I  made  sundry  additions  only  this 
morning;  but  the  trouble  is  that  it  would  be  use- 
less to  send  the  proofs  as  they  stand,  as  I  have  only 
had  time  to  correct  one  error  of  punctuation  in  a 
thousand.  No  page  is  free  from  misplaced,  omit- 
ted, or  superfluous  stops,  commas,  parentheses,  etc. 
To  make  the  text  readable  the  pointing  would  have 
to  be  remodelled  throughout.  If  I  have  time  to 
finish  doing  this  for  The  Shadow  of  Night,  I  will 
send  you  that  sheet  as  an  example.  I  shall  be  glad 
to  see  the  Two  Wise  Men  and  will  let  you  know 
at  once  what  I  think  of  it.  As  to  The  Second 
Maiden's  Tragedy,  my  verdict  is  decidedly  for  in- 
sertion. 

Faithfully  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXXI 

To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Aug.  list,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  have  just  received  your  very  valuable 
present  of  the  three  dramatists.  With  your  edi- 
tions of  Dekker  and  Heywood  I  was  already  in 

153 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

part  acquainted;  I  hope  now  to  complete  the  ac- 
quaintance. The  Glapthorne  is  a  very  pretty  book, 
and  I  mean  to  try  the  author's  metal  at  once.  This 
morning  also  arrived  the  first  detachment  of  the 
Two  Wise  Men  whom  I  hope  shortly  to  tackle.  I 
write  first  of  all  to  repeat  my  thanks  for  both  re- 
missions, and  to  ask  one  or  two  questions  regarding 
Chapman,  my  Essay  having  made  considerable 
progress  since  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you 
here,  (i)  P.  174  of  the  Poems,  2  lines  from  bot- 
tom of  second  column :  Is  the  word  "f  reres"  right- 
ly transcribed?  and  had  it  any  known  meaning? 
I  possess  a  copy  of  the  original  edition  of  the 
Epicede,  as  also  of  the  Tears  of  Peace,  but  they 
are  at  my  chambers  in  London.  I  have  carefully 
corrected  the  pointing  of  the  former  in  this  edi- 
tion throughout,  and  suggested  one  or  two  marginal 
emendations  of  apparent  misprints;  I  will  send  you 
this  proof  if  you  like,  and  you  can  put  it  into  Mr. 
Chatto's  hands,  or  if  you  please  into  the  printer's. 
If  too  late  to  be  made  use  of,  I  should  like  to  have 
it  back.  (2)  Can  you  tell  me  if  the  lines  subjoined 
to  the  Epicede  ("Thy  tomb,  arms,  statue,"  etc.) 
belong  to  the  same  publication?  or  are  these  the 
"verses  beneath  the  portraits  of  Prince  Henry,  in 
H.  Holland's  Heroologia,  1620,  pp.  48-51"?  I 
copy  from  the  MS.  list  of  contents  to  this  volume 
which  Mr.  Chatto  sent  me  with  the  first  proofs: 
and  I  see  no  such  verses  elsewhere  as  those  above 

154 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

described.  I  should  be  much  obliged  if  you  would 
send  me  a  transcript  of  the  famous  passage  on  poet- 
ry in  Marlowe's  Tamburlaine,  Part  I.,  Act  3  (I 
think),  from  the  line,  "If  all  the  pens  that  ever 
poets  held"  to  "Which  into  words  no  virtue  can 
digest."  I  have  occasion  to  quote  it  in  the  course 
of  my  Essay,  and  I  cannot  remember  all  the  inter- 
vening lines.  It  occurs  midway  in  the  soliloquy 
beginning  "Ah  fair  Zenocrate !  divine  Zenocrate !"  * 
Believe  me,  yours  most  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — I  find  that  a  leaf  (pp.  267,  268)  has 
slipped  out  of  the  second  Vol.  of  Glapthorne,  leav- 
ing your  interesting  notes  on  A.  Gill  and  Lovelace 
both  imperfect,  one  (p.  266)  at  the  end,  the  other 
(p.  269)  at  the  beginning.  If  you  have  the  leaf 
missing  by  you,  perhaps  you  will  add  to  your  kind- 
ness by  sending  it  to  complete  the  copy. 

1  The  passage  is  in  The  First  Part  of  Tamburlaine  the  Great, 
Act  V.,  Sc.  2. 


155 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 


The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Aug.  25th,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  have,  as  you  will  perceive,  carefully 
read  through  the  voluminous  MS.  you  were  good 
enough  to  send  me,  correcting  one  or  two  slips  and 
adding  one  or  two  queries  and  conjectures:  and  my 
final  opinion  is  that  you  will  do  well  to  include 
this  curious  quasi-dramatic  tract  or  pamphlet  in 
the  Appendix,  and  that  you  did  well  to  exclude 
it  from  the  list  of  Chapman's  Plays.  I  think  your 
suggestion  that  a  confusion  of  the  title  with  that  of 
All  Fools  may  have  originated  the  attribution  of  it 
to  Chapman  is  very  probably  as  correct  as  it  is 
certainly  ingenious.  But  in  any  case  the  book, 
never  having  been  reprinted,  has  a  double  value 
as  a  curious  study  of  manners,  and  as  having  been 
attributed  to  Chapman  by  such  early  tradition 
(Langbaine  writing  but  57  years  after  his  death). 
I  think  therefore  that  most  readers  will  agree  with 
me  that  its  insertion  cannot  but  add  to  the  value 
of  your  edition.  I  observe  a  curious  detail,  that 
several  names  irt  it  are  anagrams  merely  spelt 

156 


backwards;  Mr.  Eloc=Cole,  Sir  Retlaw=Walter, 
Pohssib=Bisshop,  Boc=Cob,  and  others.  Does 
this  point  to  a  personal  attack?  The  attack  on  fe- 
male Puritanism  (which  has  some  humour,  though 
exaggerated  and  too  much  spun  out)  is  in  spiric  not 
unlike  Chapman.  But  I  cannot  easily  believe  that 
it  was  written  by  a  dramatist;  (to  be  sure,  Chap- 
man can  be  very  wndramatic  when  he  pleases;) 
it  seems  rather  the  work  of  some  Conservative 
pamphleteer,  perhaps  a  Catholic,  at  least  High 
Anglican.  I  am  glad  to  have  read  it,  but  must 
be  excused  from  believing  that  it  was  divers  times 
or  ever,  acted  on  any  stage  before  any  merely  hu- 
man audience  with  simply  mortal  powers  of  pa- 
tience. There  are  several  historical  and  social  al- 
lusions worth  nothing.  I  return  also  The  Second 
Maiden's  Tragedy,  which  I  have  kept  for  a  final 
reading,  and  marked  in  pencil  some  few  errors  in 
the  punctuation  and  distribution  of  lines.  It  has 
much  beauty,  but  is  more  like  Middleton  in  style 
than  Chapman  or  any  one  else  I  know.  I  enclose 
your  paper  received  to-day,  with  the  two  extracts 
verified  by  me  crossed  out  as  you  desired.  Many 
thanks  for  the  passage  from  Marlowe  (and  for 
Coleridge's  notes  and  the  Langbaine  extract  sent 
before)  and  for  your  information.  I  will  look 
over  the  proofs  again  at  my  leisure,  and  send  you 
any  corrections  or  conjectures  I  think  worth  while. 
I  shall  be  curious  to  know  how  you  thrive  in  the 

157 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Bodleian,  and  if  you  find  all  of  the  poems  you  ex- 
pected, though  not  the  Parnassian  extracts.  I 
wish  we  could  trace  the  two  last. 

Yours  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXXIII 

To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Sept.  4th,  [1874] 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  should  have  acknowledged  at  once  the 
receipt  of  the  transcribed  MSS.  a  few  days  since; 
but  I  put  off  writing  for  a  day  or  two  till  I  had 
time  to  study  them  with  care  before  returning 
them,  as  I  do  by  this  post,  with  many  thanks.  At 
the  first  glance  I  recognized  as  old  friends  the  two 
poems  on  The  Body  and  The  Mind,  which,  unless 
I  am  much  mistaken,  you  will  find  in  any  edition 
of  Ben  Jonson's  minor  poems.  That  they  are  his 
and  not  Chapman's  I  presume  there  can  be  no 
manner  of  doubt.  They  are  far  too  good  in  style, 
too  simple  and  intelligible  in  idea,  to  be  the  work 
of  Chapman,  unless  by  some  miracle.  The  absence 
of  barbarism  and  bombast  is  conclusive  against  his 
authorship ;  and  the  metrical  structure  and  turn  of 

158 


\ 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

language  are  thoroughly  Jonsonian.  I  have  done 
my  best  to  make  sense  of  the  "malicious  trash," 
of  which  in  spite  of  Gifford's  unwillingness  I  fear 
we  must  believe  Chapman  guilty;  but  great  part 
of  it  is  evidently  one  chaotic  mass  of  corruption. 
Some  readings,  however  (as  "petards"  and  "Fur- 
ens"),  I  have  restored  or  substituted  as  evidently 
right;  others  I  have  suggested  as  plausible.  It  is 
such  a  disgusting  piece  of  spiteful  rubbish,  and 
written  in  such  an  infernal  jargon,  that  I  am  sorry 
for  our  old  poet's  credit  it  should  ever  have  been 
taken  down  by  some  officious  pickthank  who  prob- 
ably waylaid  the  old  man's  weaker  hours  and  per- 
petuated the  memory  of  what  in  a  healthier  mood 
the  author  would  have  thrown  into  the  fire. 

I  am  delighted  to  hear  of  the  recovery  of  Eu- 
genia, and  sincerely  hope  she  may  do  more  credit 
to  her  parentage  than  this  ugliest  of  all  metrical 
abortions.  I  have  made  a  note  of  three  questions 
which  you  will  doubtless  be  able  to  solve  for  me. 
(i)  I  find  in  a  paper  on  Marlowe  in  this  month's 
Cornhill  a  statement  which  I  think  is  not  new  to 
me,  that  Marlowe  at  his  death  left  behind  him, 
besides  the  two  first  sestiads  of  Hero  and  Leander, 
a  fragment  of  200  lines  which  was  worked  up  by 
Chapman  into  the  text  of  his  sequel.  There  is 
strong  internal  evidence  of  this;  can  you  tell  me 
what  external  evidence  there  is  of  the  fact,  and 
when  it  was  first  stated  in  print?  (2)  What  was 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Marlowe's  exact  age  at  his  death,  30  or  33?  (3) 
In  the  prefatory  note  of  The  Second  Maiden's 
Tragedy,  does  the  writer  say  that  "Thomas 
Goughe"  was  substituted  for  "William"  or  vice 
versa  in  the  first  alteration  of  names  inscribed  on 
the  MS.?  I  forgot  to  make  a  note  of  this.  I 
shall  be  curious  to  hear  in  what  condition  you 
find  the  MS.  of  this  play,  and  if  it  supplies  any 
corrections  of  the  text.  I  have  given  a  careful 
account  of  its  history  and  analysis  of  the  probabili- 
ties of  authorship  in  my  Essay.  There  is  a  re- 
markable passage  on  the  subject  in  Beddoes'  Cor- 
respondence. 

I  am  sorry  that  my  delay  in  acknowledging  the 
receipt  of  the  MS.  you  were  kind  enough  to  send 
should  have  given  you  a  moment's  uneasiness ;  the 
delay  was  undesigned,  and  I  meant  to  have  writ- 
ten as  soon  as  I  had  deciphered  the  text,  which 
proved  a  harder  task  than  I  expected.  The  orig- 
inal transcriber  of  the  Invective  did  not,  I  suspect, 
himself  understand  more  than  half  or  a  quarter 
of  the  execrable  trash  he  was  copying.  The  bru- 
tal allusions  (among  others)  to  the  destruction  of 
Jonson's  papers  by  fire  are  curious;  so  would  other 
passages  probably  be,  however  worthless  in  them- 
selves, if  reducible  to  rhyme  or  reason,  grammar 
or  metre  or  sense. 

Yours  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 
1 60 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  LXXXIV 

To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

The  Orchard, 
Niton. 

Sept.  8th,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

If  I  had  seen  anywhere  the  newly  un- 
earthed copy  of  verses  signed  "G.  C."  without  any 
such  initials  or  other  indication  of  authorship,  I 
think  I  should  have  exclaimed  "Aut  Georgius 
Chapmannus  aut  Diabolus."  I  congratulate  you, 
once  more,  on  this  little  wind-fall  as  an  authentic 
curiosity.  Many  thanks  for  the  other  papers  which 
I  herewith  return,  having  solved  all  my  doubt 
by  their  help;  and  more  for  your  very  full  and 
sufficient  account  of  the  origin  of  the  report  as  to 
Hero  and  Leander.  This  day  week  (Tuesday, 
Sept.  1 5th)  I  return  for  a  short  time  to  London, 
where  my  address  is  3,  Great  James  Street,  Bed- 
ford Row,  W.  C.,  so  that  we  shall  be  at  need  within 
hail  of  each  other  for  awhile. 

Yours  faithfully, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — I  quite  agree  with  you  that  the  unverified 
fragments   (not,  however,  this  last  copy  of  com- 

161 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

mandatory  verses — by  the  by  what  is  this  History 
of  Hipolito  and  Isabella"?  has  it  any  connexion 
with  the  underplot  of  Middleton's  Women  beware 
Women,  the  names  of  hero  and  heroine  being  iden- 
tical?) should  be  relegated  to  an  Appendix  as 
doubtful.  I  find  on  a  second  or  third  careful  re- 
vision of  the  poem  that  (as  I  thought)  Mr.  Col- 
lier's reference  of  the  fragment  in  England's  Par- 
nassus beginning  "Their  virtues  mount  like  bil- 
lows," etc.,  to  Ovid's  Banquet  of  Sense  is  wrong; 
there  is  no  such  passage  in  that  production. — A. 
C.  S. 


LETTER  LXXXV 
To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

Oct.  12th,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  am  much  obliged  for  the  proofs  of 
Eugenia.  Do  you  want  them  back  at  once  or 
may  I  keep  them  till  the  next  come  in?  It  is  a 
curious  and  very  characteristic  poem,  so  far.  Most 
of  my  MS.  is  now  in  Chatto's  hands  or  I  should 
have  been  happy  to  show  you  any  part  of  it.  I 
will  tell  him,  if  you  like,  to  let  you  see  the  proofs 
when  ready.  I  must  add  a  note  somewhere  on 

162 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Eugenia,  which  seems  quite  a  long  affair.  I  [have] 
not  been  well  enough  to  make  or  receive  visits, 
besides  being  very  busy,  or  should  have  hoped  to 
see  you  last  week. 

Yours  faithfully, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXXVI 

To  RICHARD  HERNE  SHEPHERD 

3,  Great  James  St., 
Bedford  Row, 
W.G. 
Oct.  igth,  [1874]. 

DEAR  SIR, 

In  an  Appendix  of  which  I  shall  to-day 
place  the  MS.  in  the  publisher's  hands,  I  have 
seized  an  opportunity  of  doing  such  justice  to  the 
"energy  and  enthusiasm"  displayed  by  you  as  edi- 
tor of  Chapman  as  must,  I  think,  be  taken  to 
counterbalance  any  passing  stricture  on  the  state 
of  the  text  which  may  occur  in  the  body  of  my  es- 
say. A?  Chatto  has  not  yet  sent  me  the  proofs  I 
cannot  recall  the  terms  I  may  have  used;  but 
I  am  certain  they  can  contain  or  imply  no  dis- 
paragement of  your  unmistakable  "goodwill," 

163 


however  I  may  have  felt  it  necessary  to  remark 
on  the  extreme  confusion  of  the  pointing  which 
too  generally  prevails,  to  the  infinite  perplexity  (as 
I  know  to  my  cost)  of  the  reader:  commas,  peri- 
ods, and  semicolons  being  often  shaken  out  over 
the  page  to  light  where  they  may  in  the  middle 
of  a  sentence,  which  is  then  left  to  run  on  into  the 
next  without  any  note  or  stop  to  indicate  where 
the  sense  breaks  off  or  the  sentence  pauses.  Such 
mispunctuation  would  make  any  author  difficult 
to  read;  in  the  case  of  one  who  is  already  the  most 
difficult  and  obscure  writer  I  ever  tried  to  tackle, 
it  is  an  almost  fatal  impediment  added  to  the  many 
which  Chapman  had  already  cast  in  his  reader's 
way.  You  will  observe  by  the  corrected  proofs, 
which,  as  you  wish  to  see  them,  I  will  send  you 
through  Mr.  Chatto,  that  this  reckless  punctuation 
is  the  main  and  real  ground  of  complaint  We 
expect  it  in  the  old  editions,  and  must  put  up 
with  it  in  a  "facsimile"  reprint,  but  in  a  modern 
edition  we  may  reasonably  expect  to  find  it  rec- 
tified. Assuredly  I  can  have  no  wish  to  say  or 
do  anything  that  might  possibly  be  hurtful  to  you 
with  the  publisher  or  the  public;  on  the  contrary, 
I  have  taken  every  occasion  to  express  my  grati- 
tude for  your  help  and  my  sense  of  your  energy 
and  goodwill  as  editor;  nor  should  I  have  thought 
of  taking  upon  myself  unsolicited  to  read  you  a 
lecture  on  the  imperfections  of  the  text;  but  as 

164 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

you  have  thought  my  passing  remark  on  the  mat- 
ter worth  notice  or  appeal,  I  must  say  that  I  find 
my  opinion  more  than  shared — considerably  ex- 
ceeded— by  other  students  who  have  examined  it. 
But  if  I  have  seemed  to  disparage  or  depreciate 
your  "goodwill"  as  editor,  that  phrase  I  will  cer- 
tainly rescind  or  alter. 

I  finished  reading  Eugenia  last  night,  and  made 
a  few  corrections  and  suggestions,  but  the  most 
important  ("mouths"  for  the  absurd  reading 
"months"  and  "of"  substituted  for  "called"  as  a 
supplementary  word)  I  find  you  have  made  al- 
ready. However,  I  will  send  these  with  the  other 
proofs  on  the  chance  that  they  may  be  of  use  to 
you. 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  LXXXVII 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

3,  Great  James  Street, 

w.c. 

October  3Oth,  [1874]. 
MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

My  time  and  mind  have  been  for  the 
last  three  days  too  entirely  occupied  with  W.  Ros- 

165 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

setti's  memoir  and  edition  of  Blake  to  think,  much 
less  talk  or  write,  on  any  other  subject — let  alone 
myself.  Now  having  written  to  him  twelve  pages 
of  thanks,  and  remarks  on  that  and  other  matters, 
I  write  at  once  to  tell  you  that,  of  course,  if  you 
like  to  write  anything  on  me  I  shall  be  pleased 
and  flattered,  and  all  the  more  obliged  if  I  am 
allowed  to  see  it  in  English,  as  in  Dr.  Brandes' 
language  it  will  be  lost  to  me.1  My  birthday  is 
April  $th — don't  make  it  the  ist. 

I  think  you  are  unjust  to  Chapman,  and  (in 
your  article  last  Saturday  on  Minto's  book,2  which 
I  have  not  yet  seen)  to  the  real  and  splendid 
though  limited  talents  of  Randolph — but  of  this 
we  will  talk  when  we  next  meet.  Those  damned 
proofs  of  my  "Chapman"  will  drive  me  mad,  or 
blind,  or  both — but  while  I  retain  my  wits  and 
eyes  I  shall  remain  ever 

Affectionately  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  It  appeared  in  Det  Nittende  Aarhundrede,  a  literary  and 
political  review,  conducted  in  Danish,  by  Dr.  Georg  Brandes. 

2  Characteristics  of  English  Poets  from  Chaucer  to  Shirley. 
By  William  Minto,  1874. 


1 66 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  LXXXVIII 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

3,  Great  James  Street, 

W.C. 
December  i^th,  [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  was  very  sorry  when  I  saw  your  card 
that  I  could  not  come  to  you  last  Thursday.  Hor- 
rible and  hellish  as  the  weather  was,  I  would 
have  tried  to  make  my  way  thither  if  I  had  been 
able  to  go  out  at  all.  But  next  Thursday  I  hope 
we  may  meet  at  the  [W.B.]  Scotts,  and  on  Satur- 
day evening  I  intend  to  read  my  new  poem  to  a 
few  friends — beginning  at  8  sharp.  I  shall  be  very 
glad  if  you  can  come;  and  I  want  to  get  Philip 
Marston,  but  I  have  mislaid  his  present  address, 
and  I  don't  know  whom  to  ask  to  accompany  him. 
I  should  like  to  ask  O'Shaughnessy  and  Marzials 
if  I  knew  their  addresses,  only  I  have  eight  guests 
engaged  already,  and  too  many  in  one  room  on 
such  an  occasion  would  make  it  more  difficult  to 
read;  and  for  more  than  twelve  I  really  have  not 
house-room. 

Send  a  line  to  say  if  you  can  come. 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


167 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  LXXXIX 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
December  3ist,  1874. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  INGRAM, 

Many  thanks  for  your  first  volume  of 
Poe.1  I  had  already  glanced  over  your  invaluable 
vindication,  which  I  am  happy  to  see  is  already 
bearing  fruit;  and  I  congratulate  you  sincerely 
on  the  good  work  you  have  so  well  done  for  the 
memory  of  a  great  and  maligned  poet.  My  friend 
Edmund  Gosse  had  an  excellent  article  on  it  which 
I  suppose  you  saw. 

Believe  me, 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1The  first  volume  of  the  4  Vol.  collected  edition  of  Poe's 
Works,  published  by  Messrs.  A.  &  C.  Black,  of  Edinburgh. 
This  collection  was  edited  by  Mr.  Ingram,  and  contains  hisi 
biographical  vindication  of  the  poet. 


1 68 


LETTER  XC 

To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Tham.es. 
January  gthf  1875. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  INGRAM, 

Many  thanks  for  the  second  and  third 
volumes  of  your  beautiful  edition.1  I  sincerely 
hope  that  you  will  carry  out,  and  that  soon,  your 
project  of  writing  a  full  biography  of  Poe. 

I  agree  with  you  entirely  as  to  the  less  than 
little  worth  of  ordinary  reviews  from  whatever 
point  of  view;  and  I  do  not  think  I  shall  ever 
undertake  a  review  of  Poe,  if  only  because  Baude- 
laire has  been  before  me,  and  made  a  study  of  the 
poet  certainly  unsurpassable  and  probably  unap- 
proachable for  depth,  subtlety,  sympathy,  and 
truth.  I  do  not  choose  to  go  on  any  man's  trail, 
and  in  writing  a  purely  critical  (not  biographical) 
essay  on  Poe,  one  cannot  now  keep  clear  of  ground 
preoccupied  by  the  great  French  lyrist  and  critic. 
But  I  was  nearly  tempted  the  other  day,  on  read- 
ing some  imbecile  remarks  on  the  two  men  (giving, 
of  course,  the  preference  to  the  smaller),  to  write 

1The  4  Vol.  edition  of  Foe's  Works,  edited  by  Mr.  In- 
gram. 

169 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

a  rapid  parallel  or  contrast  between  Hawthorne 
— the  half  man  of  genius  who  never  could  carry 
out  an  idea  or  work  it  through  to  the  full  result 
— and  Poe,  the  complete  man  of  genius  (however 
flawed  and  clouded  at  times)  who  always  worked 
out  his  ideas  thoroughly,  and  made  something  sol- 
id, rounded,  and  durable  of  them — not  a  mist- 
wreath  or  a  waterfall.  It  is  the  difference  between 
a  poet  and  a  quasi-poet.  If  you  should  ever  find 
occasion  or  wish  to  quote  this  expression  of  my 
opinion,  you  are  quite  welcome  to  do  so.1 

I  hope  I  shall  have  a  sight  of  your  letters  to 
the  American  papers  in  re  Poe  v.  Stoddard  or 
others.  As  to  the  character  of  the  Americans  gen- 
erally, my  own  impression  (confirmed  by  experi- 
ence) is  that  they  are  either  delightful  or  detest- 
able— the  best  or  the  worst  company  possible — 
there  is  no  medium. 

Believe  me, 

Yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  It  is  understood  that  this  opinion  of  Hawthorne  was  much 
modified  by  Swinburne  in  after  years. 


170 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XCI 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
January  $istf  [1875]. 

My  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  must  confess  that  I  had  quite  forgot- 
ten what  anniversary  *  was  yesterday,  though  oddly 
enough  I  had  been  thinking  of  it  in  passing,  and 
(not  having  the  date  at  hand  to  look  up)  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  centenary  must  have 
been  over  a  year  or  two  since.  I  am  vexed  to  have 
let  it  slip.  Had  I  known  it  a  week  earlier  I 
should  have  proposed  to  you,  and  such  friends  as 
might  have  liked  to  join  us,  a  meeting  in  honour 
of  the  day.  If — as  proposed  in  The  Athenaum, — 
any  commemoration  of  Lamb's  centenary  is  to 
take  place  next  week  (Feb.  icth)  I  hope  to  take 
part  in  it,  and  come  up  to-morrow  week  for  a 
few  days  only  to  London.  There  ought  to  be 
among  our  own  friends  and  acquaintances  enough 
lovers  of  Lamb  to  make  at  least  a  pleasant  private 
party.  Would  Scott  join  it  do  you  think?  I  wrote 

1  Walter  Savage  Landor  was  born  on  the  3Oth  of  January, 
1775;  Charles  Lamb  «n  the  loth  of  February  following. 

171 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

to  Watts  about  it  yesterday.  There  being  but  ten 
days  between  the  two  dates,  we  might  commem- 
orate with  the  same  libations  both  the  two  great 
men  who  loved  and  admired  each  other  in  life, 
and  whose  memories  might  fitly  and  gracefully  be 
mingled  after  death  in  our  affectionate  recollec- 
tion. 

I  read  your  article  of  yesterday  with  great  pleas- 
ure, and  with  thorough  sympathy  of  opinion,  ex- 
cept as  to  one  expression  which  startled  me  con- 
siderably. You  speak  of  the  "laborious  versifica- 
tion" of  Catullus,  whom  I  should  have  called  the 
least  laborious,  and  the  most  spontaneous  in  his 
godlike  and  birdlike  melody,  of  all  lyrists  known 
to  me  except  Sappho  and  Shelley:  I  should  as 
soon  call  a  lark's  note  laboured  as  his.  And  with 
all  my  loving  admiration  of  Landor  as  a  poet,  I 
cannot  consider  him  as  belonging  to  the  same  class, 
or  even  to  the  same  kind,  as  Catullus ;  though  you 
have  very  justly  pointed  out  the  many  and  noble 
personal  qualities  they  had  in  common.  Lander's 
verse,  as  a  rule,  without  ever  being  harsh  or  weak, 
yet  wants  the  contrary  characteristic  of  subtle  and 
simple  sweetness;  while  no  poet  ever  had  more  of 
this  than  the  Veronese:  few  ever  had  so  much. 
This  has  been  noted  by  Landor  himself,  who  (per- 
haps under  the  influence  of  Catullus),  has  some- 
times touched  in  his  Latin  verse  a  string  of  more 
exquisite  and  spontaneous  melody  than  was  often 

172 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

struck  in  his  English  poems.  As  to  the  wholly 
unequalled  if  not  unapproached  and  unapproach- 
able excellence  of  his  prose,  you  know  how 
thoroughly  I  am  at  one  with  you.  Indeed, 
it  is  always  a  thorn  in  my  flesh  when  writing  prose, 
and  a  check  to  any  satisfaction  I  might  feel  in 
it,  to  reflect  that  probably  I  never  have  written 
or  shall  write  a  page  that  Landor  might  have 
signed.  Nothing  of  the  sort  (or  of  any  sort)  ever 
troubles  me  in  writing  verse,  but  this  always  haunts 
me  when  at  work  on  prose.  As  to  my  own  inter- 
course with  the  divine  old  man,  I  shall  never  have 
more  to  tell  the  world  than  I  have  already  made 
public  in  verse ;  for  there  is  nothing  to  tell  except 
such  things  as  cannot  be  told ;  slight  personal  mat- 
ters, not  the  less  precious  that  they  must  be  pri- 
vate. 

My  article  in  The  Fortnightly  is,  of  course,  that 
on  Wells,  recast  from  the  thirteen  or  fourteen  year 
old  sketch  written  when  I  was  hardly  quit  of  col- 
lege. Anyhow  I  can  write  better  prose  than  I 
could  at  twenty-one  or  so.  I  am  curious  to  read 
the  first  review  of  my  book  on  Chapman.  There 
are  some  passages  which  I  rather  hope  may  attract 
notice  of  one  kind  or  another;  e.g.  ( i )  the  excursus 
on  Browning,  which  I  do  think  the  truest  crit- 
icism, and  mcot  to  the  point,  that  has  appeared 
on  the  subject,  though  I  don't  expect  it  to  con- 
vert those  (for  such  I  know  there  are!)  who  prefer 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

his  earlier  works  (i.e.  those  which  he  was  pleased 
to  consider  dramatic  or  lyrical)  to  those  later 
studies  on  which  his  genuine  and  peculiar  fame 
depends.  (2)  The  summary  of  evidence  (inter- 
nal and  external)  as  to  the  authorship  of  the  Sec- 
ond Maiden's  Tragedy,  which  I  consider  rather  a 
good  bit  of  exhaustive  criticism  on  a  debateable 
subject.  (3)  Certain  passages  of  a  somewhat  Lan- 
dorian  nature  (when  the  old  lion  was  using  his 
teeth  and  claws),  or,  so  I  flatter  myself,  at  pp.  54, 
55,  and  71.  (4)  The  lash  applied  to  stage  li- 
censers and  the  English  censorial  system  on  pp. 
97>  98-  (5)  The  critical  and  historical  review  of 
the  tragedies  based  on  contemporary  French  an- 
nals. (6)  The  final  "discourse"  on  the  nature  and 
the  end  of  our  art,  and  on  the  two  kinds  of  poets — 
the  Shakespeares  and  Marlowes  who  stand  on  the 
right  among  the  gods,  the  Jonsons  and  Chap- 
mans  who  stand  on  the  left  among  the  giants;  a 
distinction  which  I  mean  some  day  to  examine 
and  work  out  at  greater  length.  These,  if  any,  are 
points  in  the  book  which  I  think  deserve  some  at- 
tention. 

I  am  now  at  work  on  my  long-designed  essay 
or  study  on  the  metrical  progress  or  development 
of  Shakespeare  as  traceable  by  ear  and  not  by  fin- 
ger, and  the  general  changes  of  tone  and  stages  of 
mind  expressed  or  involved  in  this  change  or  prog- 
ress of  style.  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  begin  with 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

a  massacre  of  the  pedants  worthy  of  celebration, 
an  Icelandic  saga — "a  murder  grim  and  great."  I 
leave  the  "finger-counters  and  finger-casters"  with- 
out a  finger  to  count  on  or  an  (ass's)  ear  to  wag. 
Which  do  you  think  would  be  the  best  title  for 
this  essay — The  Three  Stages  of  Shakespeare,  or 
The  Progress  of  Shakespeare?  If  not  (as  I  fear  it 
is)  too  pretentious,  the  latter  would  perhaps  be 
— or  sound — best 

Also,  if  you  can,  do  for  my  sake  help  me  to  a 
comprehensive  title  for  my  forthcoming  collection 
of  reprinted  verse,  which  comprises  the  Song  of 
Italy,  Ode  on  the  French  Republic,  and  the  Dira 
(sonnets  mostly  printed  in  The  Examiner,  of  '73) . 
"Political  Poems,"  which  Chatto  has  put  on  the 
(proof)  title-page,  would  probably  sink  any  book 
at  once.  I  want  some  title  which  may  express  the 
mixture  in  the  volume  of  blessing  and  cursing— 
two-thirds  of  the  first  to  one-third  of  the  second. 
Under  this  main  title  I  should  put  the  separate 
sub-titles  of  the  three  parts,  so  as  to  avoid  all  ap- 
pearance of  the  Grub  Street  jockeyship  of  passing 
off  old  wares  under  a  new  name.  The  last  name 
I  have  thought  of  is  Songs  in  time  of  Change — but 
I  don't  much  like  it — or  Poems  of  Revolution! 

I  have  written  you  a  long  and  egoistic  letter, 
but,  as  you  say,  it  is  long  since  we  had  a  talk, 
and  I  have  been  thinking  repeatedly  of  writing 
to  you  lately  about  these  and  other  matters — nota- 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

bly  about  Blake  and  Poe — which  there  is  no  room 
to  do  here  or  now.  My  volume  of  Essays  and 
Studies  is  going  rapidly  through  the  press.  I 
have  added  a  preface  and  sundry  notes  to  the  orig- 
inal text,  which  is  otherwise  almost  unaltered  in 
any  way. 

Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XCII 
JTo  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
February  $th,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  mean  to  come  up  to  London  on  Mon- 
day morning  (8th)  and  hope  to  see  you  at  once 
and  arrange  our  little  affair  for  Wednesday.  Could 
we  lunch  or  dine  anywhere  together  on  Monday 
and  talk  it  over?  A  line  dropt  at  my  rooms  that 
morning  would  be  sure  to  catch  me  on  arriving, 
and  we  could  meet  when  and  where  you  pleased. 
I  have  at  last  hit  on  a  passable  name  for  my 
unchristened  and  unchristian  offspring — Songs  of 

176 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Two  Nations.  All  the  poems  in  the  book,  great 
and  small,  deal  with  French  or  Italian  matters — 
Republican,  Papal,  or  Imperial.  I  shall  be  de- 
lighted if  you  do  review  "Chapman,"  and  certain- 
ly none  the  less  if  you  find  debateable  points  which 
we  may  discuss  in  private  or  in  public — it  gives 
a  zest  to  the  expression  of  sympathy  to  have  some 
points  of  amicable  disagreement.  Apropos,  would 
Minto  not  like  to  partake  of  our  Passover  feast 
in  honour  of  a  Lamb  quite  other  than  Paschal 
(as  Carlyle  might  word  it)  ?  I  should  be  delight- 
ed to  meet  him  there — or  anywhere. 
Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XCIII 
To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

3,  Great  James  Street. 

February  2Oth,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

For  the  sake  of  Heaven,  of  History,  and 
of  Truth,  let  me  see  or  hear  from  you  as  soon 
as  possible.  The  return  of  Dr.  Kenealy  for  Stoke 
has  at  last  given  me  courage  to  make  public  as 
much  as  I  dare  of  the  case  of  that  Royal  Claimant 

177 


yesterday  mentioned  in  the  Daily  News.  I  have 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  injured  lady  still 
lives — that  the  rightful  Queen  of  England  is  at 
this  moment  a  prisoner  in  Newgate.  Here  is  a 
case  for  the  truly  honourable  member  for  Stoke. 
What  was  the  Tichborne  case  to  this?  Why,  the 
man  that  should  right  her  might  aspire  to  share 
her  throne.  I  have  spent  hours,  really,  in  writing 
a  letter  on  the  subject  (suppressing  the  secret  of 
her  existence  which  I  now  confide  as  yet  to  your 
ear  alone)  which  under  the  signature  of  Historicus 
I  must  and  will  get  published  and  you  must  and 
shall  help  me.  The  Daily  News  would  be  best,  as 
they  first  have  dared  (most  honourably)  to  men- 
tion it  in  public — but  a  slight  verbal  alteration 
would  fit  it  for  any  paper.  The  case  must  stir  the 
heart  alike  of  Whig  and  Tory.  I  trust  this  address 
will  chance  to  catch  you  to-night — I  know  no  like- 
lier. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  S. 


178 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  XCIV 
To  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

[Holmwood, 
Henley-on-Thames.] 
February  2Oth,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  STEDMAN, 

I  have  just  received  your  letter  and  the 
kindly  and  able  article  accompanying  it.  First 
of  all,  accept  my  cordial  thanks  for  both,  and  my 
assurance  that  I  consider  the  latter  the  most  pow- 
erful as  well  as  the  most  gratifying  to  me  person- 
ally I  ever  read  on  the  subject.  Then  I  must  say 
how  glad  I  am  that  you  have  done  me  the  justice 
not  to  attribute  my  long  neglect  in  writing  to 
graceless  and  discourteous  ingratitude.  The  en- 
forced delay  began  through  inability  to  write  at 
the  time  with  the  proper  fulness,  being  frequently 
too  unwell  to  apply  my  hand  or  mind  to  writing, 
and  constantly  distracted  by  various  calls  on  my 
time  and  attention.  Then,  leaving  London  for 
change  of  air,  I  put  by  as  far  and  as  long  as 
possible  all  correspondence  of  business  or  of  pleas- 
ure. These  together  do,  I  hope,  make  up  a  real 
and  sufficient  excuse  to  any  one  who  will  take  into 
friendly  account  the  general  human  experience 
how  a  duty  put  off  for  a  day  by  necessity  is  sure 

179 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

to  be  put  off  by  accident  for  months.  Then,  very 
unluckily  for  me,  the  mere  physical  act  of  writ- 
ing, which  to  some  men,  e.g.  to  Rossetti,  seems  a 
positive  enjoyment,  is  to  me  usually  a  positive  and 
often  a  painful  effort.  I  have  often  wished  to 
have  lived  my  life  and  sung  my  song  in  the  times 
of  unwritten  and  purely  oral  poetry.  But  I  must 
resign  myself  to  the  curse  of  penmanship — and 
mine,  I  fear,  is  a  curse  to  my  friends  also.  How 
Shakespeare  must  have  hated  it!  Look  at  his  vil- 
lainous and  laborious  pothooks,  and  Ben  Jonson's, 
or  Milton's,  copperplate  and  vigorous  perfection 
of  hand. 

Now  let  me  at  last  tell  you  how  truly  and  how 
much  I  have  enjoyed  the  beautiful  book  of  poems 
which  you  must  long  since  have  thought  of  as 
thrown  away  on  the  most  thankless  and  ungracious 
of  recipients.  Your  rebuke  on  the  subject  of 
American  poetry  is  doubtless  as  well  deserved  as 
it  is  kindly  and  gently  expressed.  Yet  I  must  say 
that  while  I  appreciate  (I  hope)  the  respective 
excellence  of  Mr.  Bryant's  Thanatopsis  and  of  Mr. 
Lowell's  Commemoration  Ode,  I  cannot  say  that 
either  of  them  leaves  in  my  ear  the  echo  of  a  sin- 
gle note  of  song.  It  is  excellent  good  speech,  but 
if  given  us  as  song  its  first  and  last  duty  is  to  sing. 
The  one  is  most  august  meditation,  the  other  a 
noble  expression  of  deep  and  grave  patriotic  feel- 
ing on  a  supreme  national  occasion;  but  the  thing 

180 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

more  necessary,  though  it  may  be  less  noble  than 
these,  is  the  pulse,  the  fire,  the  passion  of  music 
— the  quality  of  a  singer,  not  of  a  solitary  philoso- 
pher or  a  patriotic  orator.  Now,  when  Whitman  is 
not  speaking  bad  prose  he  sings,  and  when  he  sings 
at  all  he  sings  well.  Mr.  Longfellow  has  a  pretty 
little  pipe  of  his  own,  but  surely  it  is  very  thin 
and  reedy.  Again  whatever  may  be  Mr.  Emer- 
son's merits,  to  talk  of  his  poetry  seems  to  me  like 
talking  of  the  scholarship  of  a  child  who  has  not 
learnt  its  letters.  Even  Browning's  verse  always 
goes  to  a  recognizable  tune  (I  say  not  to  a  good 
one),  but  in  the  name  of  all  bagpipes  what  is  the 
tune  of  Emerson's?  Now  it  is  a  poor  thing  to 
have  nothing  but  melody  and  be  unable  to  rise 
above  it  into  harmony,  but  one  or  the  other,  the 
less  if  not  the  greater,  you  must  have.  Imagine 
a  man  full  of  great  thoughts  and  emotions  and  re- 
solved to  express  them  in  painting  who  has  abso- 
lutely no  power  upon  either  form  or  colour.  Wain- 
wright  the  murderer,  who  never  had  any  thought 
or  emotion  above  those  of  a  pig  or  of  a  butcher, 
will  be  a  better  man  for  us  than  he.  But  (as  Blake 
says)  "Enough!  or  too  much." 

I  have  no  love  of  talking  of  my  own  or  other 
men's  personal  or  family  matters,  uninvited,  but 
there  can  hardly  be  egotism  or  self-conceit  in  com- 
plying with  the  direct  request  of  a  friend  (as  I 
understood  you  to  ask  for  some  account  of  my 

181 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

"birth  and  career" — I  think  you  said  in  your  last) ; 
so  for  once  I  will  begin  to  prate  (as  Byron  loved 
and  I  do  not  love  to  do — though  now  my  letter 
[or  essay!]  is  finished  I  fear  it  must  look  as  if  I 
did — and  very  much)  of  my  parentage  and  per- 
sonality. The  application  of  a  stranger  like  the 
editor  of  the  Men  of  the  Time  I  long  ago  civilly 
declined  to  entertain,  conceiving  that  the  public 
had  no  concern  but  with  my  published  works,  and 
leaving  him  to  find  out  what  he  could  or  to  invent 
what  he  pleased;  with  the  happy  result,  that  in 
his  first  two  lines  I  found  myself,  to  my  great 
delight,  born  some  years  out  of  my  time  at  a  place 
which  I  never  heard  of  till  I  was  between  20 
and  30. 

My  father,  Admiral  Swinburne,  'is  the  second 
son  of  Sir  John  Swinburne,  a  person  whose  life 
would  be  better  worth  writing  than  mine.  Born 
and  brought  up  in  France,  his  father  (I  believe) 
a  naturalised  Frenchman  (we  were  all  Catholic 
and  Jacobite  rebels  and  exiles)  and  his  mother  a 
lady  of  the  house  of  Polignac  (a  quaint  political 
relationship  for  me,  as  you  will  admit) ,  my  grand- 
father never  left  France  till  called  away  at  25  on 
the  falling  in  of  such  English  estates  (about  half 
the  original  quantity)  as  confiscation  had  left  to 
a  family  which  in  every  Catholic  rebellion  from 
the  days  of  my  own  Queen  Mary  to  those  of 
Charles  Edward  had  given  their  blood  like  water 

182 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

and  their  lands  like  dust  for  the  Stuarts.  I  as- 
sume that  his  Catholicism  sat  lightly  upon  a  young 
man  who  in  the  age  of  Voltaire  had  enjoyed  the 
personal  friendship  of  Mirabeau;  anyhow  he  had 
the  sense  to  throw  it  to  the  dogs  and  enter  the 
political  life  from  which  in  those  days  it  would 
have  excluded  him.  He  was  (of  course  on  the 
ultra-Liberal  side)  one  of  the  most  extreme  poli- 
ticians as  well  as  one  of  the  hardest  riders  and 
the  best  art  patrons  of  his  time.  Take  these  in- 
stances: (i)  He  used  to  tell  us  that  he  and  Lord 
Grey  had  by  the  law  of  the  land  repeatedly  made 
themselves  liable  to  be  impeached  and  executed 
for  high  treason,  and  certainly  I  have  read  a  speech 
of  his  on  the  Prince  of  Wales,  which,  if  delivered 
with  reference  to  the  present  bearer  of  that  title, 
would  considerably  astonish  the  existing  House 
of  Commons.  (2)  It  was  said  that  the  two  mad- 
dest things  in  the  north  country  were  his  horse  and 
himself;  but  I  don't  think  the  horse  can  have  been 
the  madder,  or  at  least  the  harder  to  kill ;  for  once 
when  out  shooting  he  happened  to  blow  away 
his  right  eye  with  a  good  bit  of  the  skull,  but  was 
trepanned  and  lived  to  see  his  children's  children 
(and  a  good  many  of  them),  and  after  more  than 
ninety-eight  years  of  health  and  strength  to  die 
quietly  of  a  week's  illness.  We  all  naturally  hoped 
to  see  him  fill  up  his  century,  but  the  Fate  said 
no  (3)  He  was  the  friend  of  the  great  Turner  of 

183 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Mulready,  and  of  many  lesser  artists;  I  wish  to 
God  he  had  discovered  Blake,  but  that  no  man  did 
till  our  own  day — for  the  rest,  he  was  most  kind 
and  affectionate  to  me  always  as  child,  boy  and 
youth.  To  the  last  he  was  far  liker  in  appearance 
and  manners  to  an  old  French  nobleman  (I  have 
heard  my  mother  remark  it)  than  to  any  type  of 
the  average  English  gentleman. 

He  said  that  Mirabeau  as  far  excelled  as  a  com- 
panion and  a  talker  one  other  man  as  that  other 
man  did  all  men  else  he  had  ever  known  in  his 
life,  of  any  kind  or  station;  the  man  thus  dis- 
tancing all  the  world  beside  and  distanced  as  im- 
measurably by  Mirabeau  alone,  was  Wilkes.  This 
I  always  remembered  with  interest,  and  I  thought 
it  would  interest  you;  considering  how  many  fa- 
mous and  splendid  persons  an  able  and  active  pub- 
lic man  must  have  seen  and  known,  who  all  but 
completes  his  century,  and  whose  clearness  and 
activity  of  mind  never  fails  him  to  his  last  hour. 
An  ancestress  of  his  (i.e.  a  Lady  Swinburne)  bore 
30  children  to  one  husband,  people  thronged  about 
her  carnage  in  the  streets  to  see  the  living  and 
thriving  mother  of  thirty  sons  and  daughters.  I 
think  you  will  allow  that  when  this  race  chose  at 
last  to  produce  a  poet,  it  would  have  been  at  least 
remarkable  if  he  had  been  content  to  write  noth- 
ing but  hymns  and  idyls  for  clergymen  and  young 
ladies  to  read  out  in  chapels  and  drawing  rooms. 

184 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

My  mother  is  daughter  of  (the  late)  Earl  of 
Ashburnham,  whose  family,  though  one  of  them 
was  the  closest  follower  of  Charles  I.  to  his  death, 
afterwards  held  sensibly  aloof  from  the  cause  of 
the  later  Stuarts,  and  increased  in  wealth  and  titles 
(there  was  a  Swinburne  peerage,  but  it  has  been 
dormant  or  forfeit  since  the  i3th  or  i4th  century). 

So  much  for  family  history;  which  may  be  a 
stupid  matter,  but  to  write  about  my  personality  is 
to  me  yet  more  so.  My  life  has  been  eventless  and 
monotonous;  like  other  boys  of  my  class,  I  was 
five  years  at  school  at  Eton,  four  years  at  college 
at  Oxford;  I  never  cared  for  any  pursuit,  sport, 
or  study  as  a  youngster,  except  poetry,  riding,  and 
swimming;  and,  though  as  a  boy  my  verses  were 
bad  enough,  I  believe  I  may  say  I  was  far  from 
bad  at  the  two  latter.  Also,  being  bred  by  the  sea, 
I  was  a  good  cragsman,  and  am  vain  to  this  day 
of  having  scaled  a  well-known  cliff  on  the  South 
Coast;  ever  before  and  ever  since  reputed  to  be 
inaccessible.  Perhaps  I  may  be  forgiven  for  re- 
ferring to  such  puerilities  having  read  (in  cuttings 
from  more  than  one  American  journal)  bitterly 
contemptuous  remarks  on  my  physical  debility  and 
puny  proportions.  I  am  much  afraid  this  looks 
like  an  echo  of  poor  great  Byron's  notorious  and 
very  natural  soreness  about  his  personal  defect; 
but,  really,  if  I  were  actually  of  powerless  or  de- 
formed body  I  am  certain  I  should  not  care 

185 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

though  all  men  (and  women)  on  earth  knew  and 
remarked  on  it.  I  write  all  this  rubbish  because 
I  really  don't  know  what  to  tell  you  about  my- 
self, and  having  begun  to  egotize  I  go  on  in  pure 
stupidity.  I  suppose  you  do  not  require  a  Rous- 
seau-like record  of  my  experiences  in  spiritual  or 
material  emotions;  and  knowing  as  you  do  the 
dates  and  sequence  of  my  published  books  you 
know  every  event  of  my  life.  (Note.  The  order 
of  composition  is  not  always  that  of  publication. 
Atalanta  was  begun  the  very  day  after  I  had  given 
the  last  touch  to  Chaste  lard.) 

February  list. 

Here  I  left  off  last  night,  being  very  tired  and 
feeling  myself  getting  stupid.  I  see  I  have  al- 
ready done  much  more  than  answer  such  of  your 
questions  as  I  could;  and  as  you  have  induced 
me  for  the  very  first  time  in  my  life  to  write  about 
myself,  I  am  tempted,  considering  that  I  have 
probably  been  more  be-written  and  belied  than  any 
man  since  Byron,  to  pour  myself  out  to  a  sincere 
(distant)  friend  a  little  more,  telling  any  small 
thing  that  may  come  into  my  head  to  mention. 

I  have  heard  that  Goethe,  Victor  Hugo,  and 
myself  were  all  born  in  the  same  condition — all 
but  dead,  and  certainly  not  expected  to  live  an 
hour.  Yet  I  grew  up  a  healthy  boy  enough  and 
fond  of  the  open  air,  though  slightly  built,  and 

186 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

have  never  had  a  serious  touch  of  illness  in  my 
life.  As  for  the  sea,  its  salt  must  have  been  in 
my  blood  before  I  was  born.  I  can  remember  no 
earlier  enjoyment  than  being  held  up  naked  in 
my  father's  arms  and  brandished  between  his 
hands,  then  shot  like  a  stone  from  a  sling  through 
the  air,  shouting  and  laughing  with  delight,  head 
foremost  into  the  coming  wave — which  could  only 
have  been  the  pleasure  of  a  very  little  fellow.  I 
remember  being  afraid  of  other  things,  but  never 
of  the  sea.  But  this  is  enough  of  infancy;  only  it 
shows  the  truth  of  my  endless  passionate  returns 
to  the  sea  in  all  my  verse. 

To  make  a  long  leap — for  to  be  egoistic  one 
must  be  desultory,  and  jump  from  little-boyhood 
into  young-manhood — I  was  about  to  tell  you  last 
night  that  I  had  once  an  opening  into  that  public 
life  which  alone  (I  think)  authorises  public  cu- 
riosity into  the  details  of  a  man's  biography.  Sev- 
eral years  ago  the  Reform  League  (a  body  of 
extreme  reformers  not  now  extant,  I  believe,  but 
of  some  note  and  power  for  a  time)  solicited  me 
to  sit  in  Parliament  (offering  to  insure  my  seat 
and  pay  all  expenses)  as  representative  of  more 
advanced  democratic  or  republican  opinions  than 
were  represented  there.  Now  I  never  in  my  life 
felt  any  ambition  for  any  work  or  fame  but  a 
poet's  (except,  indeed,  while  yet  a  boy,  for  a  sol- 
dier's, but  my  father  resolutely  stamped  that  out), 

187 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

and  I  appealed  to  the  man  I  most  loved  and  re- 
vered on  earth  (Mazzini  being  then  luckily  in 
London)  to  know  if  he  thought  it  was  my  duty 
to  forego  my  own  likings  on  the  chance  of  being 
of  truer  use  to  the  cause,  and  Mazzini  told  me  I 
need  not — I  was  doing  my  natural  kind  of  serv- 
ice as  it  was,  and  in  Parliament  I  should  of  course 
be  wasting  my  time  and  strength  for  a  year  on 
the  chance  of  being  of  service  by  one  speech  or 
vote  on  some  great  and  remote  occasion.  I  never 
was  more  relieved  in  my  life  than  when  I  felt 
I  could  dismiss  the  application  with  a  wholly  clear 
conscience.  (I  have  seen  a  report  of  this  in  print, 
but  not  quite  accurate.) 

As  my  Antitheism  has  been  so  much  babbled 
about,  perhaps  I  may  here  say  what  I  really  do 
think  on  religious  matters.  Having  been  as  child 
and  boy  brought  up  a  ^w^'-Catholic,  of  course  I 
went  in  for  that  as  passionately  as  for  other  things 
(e.g.  well-nigh  to  unaffected  and  unashamed  ecsta- 
sies of  adoration  when  receiving  the  Sacrament), 
then  when  this  was  naturally  stark  dead  and  bur- 
ied, it  left  nothing  to  me  but  a  turbid  Nihilism; 
for  a  Theist  I  never  was ;  I  always  felt  by  instinct 
and  perceived  by  reason  that  no  man  could  con- 
ceive of  a  personal  God  except  by  crude  supersti- 
tion or  else  by  true  supernatural  revelation;  that 
a  natural  God  was  the  absurdest  of  all  human  fig- 
ments ;  because  no  man  could  by  other  than  apoc- 

i8'8 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

alyptic  means — i.e.  by  other  means  than  a  viola- 
tion of  the  laws  and  order  of  nature — conceive  of 
any  other  sort  of  Divine  person  than  man  with  a 
difference — man  with  some  qualities  intensified 
and  some  qualities  suppressed — man  with  the  good 
in  him  exaggerated  and  the  evil  excised.  This, 
I  say,  I  have  always  seen  and  avowed  since  my 
mind  was  ripe  enough  to  think  freely.  Now,  of 
course,  this  is  the  exact  definition  of  every  god 
that  has  ever  been  worshipped  under  any  revela- 
tion. Men  give  Him  the  qualities  they  prefer  in 
themselves  or  about  them — e.g.  the  God  of  the 
Christians  is  good  for  domestic  virtue,  bad  for 
patriotic.  A  consistently  good  Christian  cannot, 
or  certainly  need  not,  love  his  country.  Again, 
the  god  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans  is  not  good  for 
the  domestic  (or  personal  in  the  Christian  sense) 
virtues,  but  gloriously  good  for  the  patriotic.  But 
we  who  worship  no  material  incarnation  of  any 
qualities,  no  person  may  worship  the  Divine  hu- 
manity, the  ideal  of  human  perfection  and  aspira- 
tion, without  worshipping  any  god,  any  person, 
any  fetish  at  all.  Therefore  I  might  call  myself, 
if  I  wished,  a  kind  of  Christian  *  (of  the  Church 
of  Blake  and  Shelley),  but  assuredly  in  no  sense 
a  Theist  Perhaps  you  will  think  this  is  only 

1  That  is,  taking  the  semi-legendary  Christ  as  type  of  human 
aspiration  and  perfection  and  supposing  (if  you  like)  that  Jesus 
may  have  been  the  highest  and  purest  sample  of  man  on  record. — 
[A.  C.  S.] 

189 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

clarified  Nihilism,  but  at  least  it  is  no  longer  tur- 
bid. There  is  something  of  this,  with  much  other 
matter,  in  Matthew  Arnold's  Literature  and  Dog- 
ma— a  book  from  which  I  cannot  say  that  I  learnt 
anything,  since  it  left  me  much  as  it  found  me, 
not  far  from  the  point  to  which  he  tries  to  bring 
his  reader;  so  that  I  was  more  than  once  struck 
by  coming  on  phrases  and  definitions  about  "God" 
almost  verbally  coincident  with  those  such  as  I 
had  myself  used,  though  not  in  public  print,  years 
before  his  book  appeared.  But  it  is  a  very  good 
and  fine  book,  and  has  done,  I  believe,  great  good 
already,  especially,  of  course,  among  the  younger 
sort.  (Has  it  found  any  echo  in  America?)  I 
think  and  hope  that  among  the  younger  English- 
men who  think  at  all  just  now  that  Theism  is 
tottering;  Theism,  which  I  feel  to  be  sillier  (if 
less  dangerous)  even  than  theology. 

To  return  to  personality  (by  no  means  a  Divine 
one),  I  need  not  say  that  you  are  most  welcome 
to  show  any  part  or  all  of  this  huge  epistle  to  any 
one  you  please,  but  if  you  wish  to  make  use  of 
any  facts  in  it  in  a  public  way,  please  do  so  in  the 
third  person,  as  I  really  have  told  you  more  than 
you  could  have  learnt  from  any  intimate  old  friend 
of  my  family  or  myself,  and  I  should  loathe  to 
appear  in  print  talking  either  about  myself  or  it, 
and  I  am  sure  you  would  do  nothing  to  pain  or 
to  make  me  feel  or  look  absurd,  in  revenge  for  the 

190 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

long  babble  you  have  brought  on  yourself,  which, 
after  all,  you  need  never  read  unless  you  like. 
Wishing  to  make  up  for  my  long  and  unseemly 
silence,  I  have  now  probably  erred  on  the  other 
side. 

You  will  soon  see  the  Poems  and  Ballads  in  a 
new  edition,  and  all  those  written  at  college  re- 
moved into  the  same  volume  with  my  two  early 
plays  and  labelled  all  together  as  Early  Poems. 
Your  guess  at  some  among  them  is  quite  right,  but 
of  course  there  are  more.  It  was  good  of  you 
to  find  anything  in  that  first  book  praiseworthy 
and  notable;  I  had  forgotten  the  verses  you  quote 
from  it,  and  rather  liked  them.  Of  all  I  have  done 
I  rate  Hertha  highest  as  a  single  piece,  finding  in 
it  the  most  of  lyric  force  and  music  combined  with 
the  most  of  condensed  and  clarified  thought.  I 
think  there  really  is  a  good  deal  compressed  and 
concentrated  into  that  poem. 

I  shall  send  you  when  ready  two  volumes  of 
reprinted  and  now  first  collected  prose  and  verse 
respectively,  with  something  new  in  each,  together 
with  my  essay  on  old  Chapman,  in  which  I  hope 
you  will  like  the  panegyric  on  Marlowe,  intro- 
ducing the  final  passage  on  the  two  kinds  of  great 
poets.  I  am  now  writing  in  the  form  of  an  essay 
a  sort  of  history  of  the  style  of  Shakespeare  and 
its  progress  through  various  stages  of  growth.  This 

191 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

I  hope  to  do  well,  as  I  have  been  studying  Shake- 
speare  ever  since  I  was  six  years  old. 

When  I  tell  you  that  I  never  was  in  France  or 
Italy  for  more  than  a  few  weeks  together,  and 
that  not  more  than  three  or  four  times  in  my 
life,  and  never  was  out  of  England  at  all  till  I 
was  eighteen,  I  think  I  shall  have  told  you  about 
all  you  want  to  know,  and  answered  your  questions 
about  as  well  as  I  can.  There  is  a  misprint,  I 
feel  sure,  in  the  words  of  mine  you  cite,  in  your 
article  (p.  592)  thanks  to  my  damnable  autograph 
— I  must  have  talked  of  "taking  delight  in  the 
metrical  forms,"  not  "poems,"  which  is  meaning- 
less, or  nearly  so,  "of  any  language,"  etc.  I  should 
think  Mr.  Conway  (whom  I  know  slightly)  would 
be  an  excellent  man  to  edit  your  book  in  London. 
Possibly  you  might  be  able  to  give  me  some  hint 
as  to  his  dealings  of  my  own  with  American  pub- 
lishers. When  Atalanta  appeared  in  1865,  I  re- 
ceived (I  think,  from  Messrs.  Osgood,  but  am  not 
sure)  a  cheque  for  £20  with  a  courteous  note  pro- 
posing arrangements  for  any  future  books.  My 
political  poems  brought  in  a  very  little,  and  Both- 
ivell  it  seems  nobody  would  take  at  any  price. 
Pardon  my  intruding  on  you  these  financial  mat- 
ters, but  Mr.  Longfellow,  whom  I  once  met  in 
London,  asked  me  what  I  had  received  from 
America,  and  on  hearing  told  me  I  had  been 
robbed  of  a  sum  which  sounded  to  me  incredible  (it 

192 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

was  much  more  than  I  ever  had  at  once  in  my  life — 
though  that  is  not  saying  much)  ;  so,  perhaps,  you 
may  be  able  to  do  me  a  kindness  in  the  matter. 

I  did  mean  to  tell  you  about  my  present  poetical 
projects,  but  being  by  this  time  as  weary  of  the 
subject  of  myself  as  you  must  be  I  will  give  you 
instead  the  name  of  one  more  friend.  All  my 
friends  know  and  joke  about  my  lifelong  fondness 
(I  am  happy  to  say  I  have  always  found  it  nat- 
urally reciprocated)  for  very  little  children  and 
very  old  persons.  Of  the  latter  I  had  known  al- 
ready two  sublime  examples  in  my  grandfather 
and  Mr.  Landor,  and  last  summer  I  made  and 
enjoyed  the  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Trelawny  (the 
friend  of  Shelley,  of  Byron,  and  of  Greece)  ;  a 
triad  of  Titans,  of  whom  one  was  a  giant  of  genius. 
The  present  piratical  old  hero  calls  me  the  last 
of  the  poets,  who  he  thought  all  died  with  Byron. 
To  hear  him  speak  of  Shelley  is  most  beautiful 
and  touching;  at  that  name  his  voice  (usually  that 
of  an  old  sea-king,  as  he  is)  always  changes  and 
softens  unconsciously.  "There,"  he  said  to  me, 
"was  the  very  best  of  men,  and  he  was  treated 
as  the  very  worst."  He  professes  fierce  general 
misanthropy,  but  is  as  ardent  a  republican  (and 
atheist)  as  Shelley  was  at  twenty;  a  magnificent 
old  Viking  to  look  at.  Of  the  three  Landor  must 
have  been  less  handsome  and  noble-looking  in 
youth  than  in  age;  my  grandfather  and  Trelawny 

193 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

probably  even  more.  At  last  I  have  done.  If  you 
ever  get  thus  far,  please  let  me  know  that  this  has 
reached  you  safely. 

Ever  yours  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XCV 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

3,  Great  James  St. 
March  gth,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

Would  you  like  to  have  my  Vision  of 
Spring  in  Winter l  (which  came  too  late  once  be- 
fore) in  the  next  number?  I  think  myself  April 
and  not  autumn  or  winter  would  be  the  time  of 
the  year  for  its  birth — especially  as  it  begins  and 
ends  with  a  reference  to  the  "birth-month." 

I  am  well  on  with  the  first  division  of  my  essay 
on  Shakespeare.  Having  touched  on  Romeo  and 
the  two  Richards  as  his  first  attempts  in  tragedy 
(apart  from  the  recasts  of  other  men's  work)  I 

1  Printed  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  for  April,  1875.  Re- 
printed in  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second  Series,  1878,  pp.  135-140. 

I94 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

am  now  discussing  the  early  comedies  written  main- 
ly or  partly  in  rhyme.  This  discussion  and  a  short 
digression  on  the  "rifacimenti"  will  bring  me  to 
an  end  of  the  first  epoch,  which  I  hope  to  finish 
this  month — but  not  in  time  for  April.  Do  you 
think  The  Progress  of  Shakespeare  a  permissible 
title — not  too  presumptuous  in  sound?  I  had  called 
my  essay  The  Three  Stages  of  Shakespeare — but 
neither  I  nor  any  one  else  liked  that  title.1 

I  have  just  had  a  letter  of  acknowledgment  from 
the  venerable  author  of  Joseph,2  written  in  an  al- 
most crazy  style  of  "chaff."  He  says  the  book  found 
favour  in  its  day,  but  he  always  thought  and  still 
thinks  nothing  of  it;  complimentary  to  my  judg- 
ment, certainly,  and  that  of  its  few  other  friends. 
But  as  he  goes  on  to  say  he  is  carefully  revising  it, 
and  is  evidently  excited  by  the  hope  of  its  republica- 
tion,  I  suspect  this  merely  a  vulpine  view  of  the 
grapes  of  popular  success. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  The  Three  Stages  of  Shakespeare,  printed  in  The  Fortnightly 
Review  for  May,  1875,  and  January,  1876. 

2  Charles  Jeremiah  Wells,  author  of  Joseph  and  his  Brethren, 
published  in  1824,  and  reissued,  under  Swinburne's  auspices,  in 
1876. 


195 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XCVI 

To  JOHN  CHURTON  COLLINS 

3,  Great  James  Street. 

March  9th,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  COLLINS, 

(pulsque  Monsieur  y  a)  I  don't  see  why 
you  should  Mr.  me  unless  you  esteem  my  friend- 
ship less  than  I  do  yours.  Basta.  I  shall  be  in  town 
till  after  Easter;  the  fortnight  following  that  holy 
anniversary  I  shall  spend  in  the  country — so  I  hope 
to  see  you  before.  I  am,  of  course,  much  interested 
and  delighted  to  hear  of  your  discoveries,  but  it  is 
disappointing  to  find  there  is  no  comedy  of  St.  Cyr- 
il's forthcoming  after  all.  I  really  did  want  to 
hear  what  V.  Hugo  (speaking  of  Aeschylus)  calls 
"le  rire  de  ce  genie  farouche,"  tho'  I  must  say  I 
should  as  soon  have  expected  a  comedy  from  his 
patron  saint,  the  murderer  of  Hypatia. 

I  am  hard  at  work  on  my  history  of  the  metrical 
progress  of  Shakespeare;  you  are  one  of  the  few 
whom  I  really  want  to  like  it,  and  I  look  forward 
to  showing  you  the  MS.  as  far  as  it  has  gone.  I 
am  still  in  the  first  or  rhyming  period,  but  have, 
I  think,  thrown  some  new  light,  or  at  least  made 
some  new  remarks,  on  the  influences  which  affected 
that  stage  of  his  work. 

196 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Did  you  read  my  article  on  Wells'  Joseph  in  the 
Feby.  Fortnightly?  I  have  just  had  the  oddest  and 
most  "cracked"  letter  from  the  author  that  ever 
was  written  by  a  man  of  genius.  Hoping  to  see 
you  soon. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XCVII 
To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

3>  Great  James  Street, 

W.C. 
March  I3/A,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  am  always  glad  to  see  you,  and  shall 
be  on  Wednesday.  I  am  engaged  that  day  among 
the  Philistines  to  "lunch"  and  all  that  follows, 
but  shall  be  disengaged — though  probably  imbecile 
— by  8  p.m.  I  was  going  to  write  to  you  this 
morning — it  is  now  iil/2  p.m. — to  tell  you  that  I 
had  yesterday  an  interview  with  Chatto,  and  of 
course  mooted  the  question  of  the  transference  of 
your  poems — in  such  fashion  as,  if  our  ages  were 
reversed,  I  should  have  liked  you  to  do  for  me— 
saying  "I  had  reason  to  believe"  you  would  not 
be  sorry  to  withdraw  your  book  from  King's  hands, 

197 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

and  transfer  it  to  his — whereon  (as  Meinhold 
would  say)  Ille — "Oh,  yes — he  would  be  happy  to 
take  your  book  from  Mr.  King."  Of  course  I  told 
him — what  was  the  simple  truth — how  well  I 
thought  of  your  work,  and  that  it  would  be  a  dis- 
tinction to  him  to  become  your  publisher — but 
there  was  no  need  of  that,  as  far  as  I  could  see.  Of 
course,  you  and  he  must  arrange  about  terms;  even 
if  I  had  known  anything  about  your  views  in  that 
matter,  I  could  not  have  arranged  with  him  for 
you;  and  I  strongly  advise  you  to  consult  Watts 
thereupon — but  as  far  as  my  own  experience  goes, 
I  must  say  I  don't  think  you  will  find  Chatto  a 
bad  sort  of  man  to  deal  with.  But  of  my  own  or 
my  friends'  finances  I  never  professed  to  be  a  judge 
(God — or  something  better — help  my  friends  if  I 
did!)  and  as  to  your  position  as  a  poet,  I  told 
Chatto  yesterday — what  I  thought,  and  need  not 
repeat.  But  one  thing  I  have  made  certain — the 
minute  you  wish  to  pass  from  King  to  Chatto  you 
can — and  will  be  welcome.1 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  The  second  edition  of  Mr.  Gosse's  On  Viol  and  Flute  was 
accordingly  transferred  to  Messrs.  Chatto  &  Windus. 


198 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  XCVIII 

To  WILLIAM  SMITH  WILLIAMS  * 

3,  Great  James  Street, 
London. 
March  i^th,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

I  ought  to  have  thanked  you  before  now 
for  the  letter  which  you  forwarded  to  me  from  Mr. 
Wells,  to  whom  I  must  also  write  a  word  of  ac- 
knowledgment, and  also  for  the  very  kind  expres- 
sions of  your  note  accompanying  it.  I  am  sincerely 
glad  if  I  have  been  able  to  do  any  little  service 
to  the  fame  of  a  noble  poem  which  I  have  admired 
for  many  years,  and  which  I  am  happy  to  hear 
is  at  last  about  to  have  a  fresh  start  with  the  public. 
I  consider  it  a  great  honour  to  be  in  any  way  as- 
sociated with  its  revival,  and  as  it  were  to  act  as 
outrider  or  usher  to  what  I  hope  will  prove  the 
triumphal  car  of  a  poet  too  long  defrauded  of  his 
just  crown  of  praise. 

I  remain,  My  dear  Sir, 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Mr.  Williams  was  the  brother-in-law  of  Wells,  and  reader 
to  Messrs.  Smith,  Elder  &  Co.,  for  whom  he  discovered  and 
secured  Charlotte  Bronte. 


199 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  XCIX 

To  CHARLES  JEREMIAH  WELLS 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

June  22nd,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  WELLS, 

It  is  rather  late  in  the  day  to  answer 
a  letter  dated  5  March,  but  I  hope  you  will  be- 
lieve that  it  was  from  no  intentional  negligence 
that  I  have  so  long  delayed  the  expression  of  my 
thanks  for  your  kind  and  friendly  recognition  of 
my  slight  services.  The  fact  is  that  I  hoped  and 
intended  to  be  out  of  the  fog  and  filth  of  London 
three  months  since,  and  then  to  write  to  you,  our 
veteran  poet,  out  of  the  midst  of  spring  sights  and 
sounds,  from  a  quiet  country  house.  But  first  pub- 
lisher's business,  engagements  thick  and  threefold, 
and  then  ill-health,  tied  me  fast  till  the  middle  of 
this  month;  but  as  soon  as  I  am  able  to  write,  being 
safe  here  among  woods  and  gardens,  I  do  write  to 
say  how  glad  I  was  to  get  your  letter,  and  to  think 
(in  spite  of  your  assumed  depreciation  of  your 
own  glorious  work)  that  my  modest  tribute  may 
have  given  you  some  little  satisfaction.  I  can  hon- 

200 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

estly  assure  you  that  I  am  but  one  of  many  who 
wait  impatiently  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  your 
great  poem  reissued,  and  holding  in  their  hands, 
not  the  fragments  I  have  chipped  off  to  exhibit  as 
specimens,  but  the  "one  entire  and  perfect  chryso- 
lite." And  surely,  however  much  you  may  despise 
fame,  it  is  something  to  be  able  to  give  to  others 
the  noblest  of  all  kinds  of  pleasure. 

Believe  me,  yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


[The  following  communication  from  Wells  is  endorsed  upon 
the  back  of  Swinburne's  letter.] 

MY  DEAR  WILLIAMS, 

I  have  no  time  to  write.  After  thanks 
equal  to  the  pains  you  have  taken,  I  have  nothing 
to  add  that  you  will  not  be  able  to  gather  from 
my  letter  to  Swinburne,  which  you  will  be  good 
enough  to  post  to  his  sure  address,  as  that  on  his 
letter  seems  rather  vague — at  least  to  me  (after 
having  read  it,  of  course). 

I  shall  send  the  MSS.  by  post,  as  they  say  it  is 
sure,  as  papier  d'affaires.  It  would  be  a  coup  mor- 
tel  if  it  miscarried,  for  I  have  had  no  time  to  recopy 
the  heavy  additions  I  have  made.  Send  me  a  news- 

201 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

paper  in  acknowledgment  as  soon  as  you  receive  it. 
It  will  leave  here  Sunday  the  nth. 

Yours  affect'ly, 

CHARLEY. 


LETTER  C 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

June  3Oth,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

Thanks  for  your  note  and  its  enclosure. 
I  think  I  must  ask  you  to  forward  the  book  (or 
let  Chatto  do  so),  as  I  can't  answer  M.  Mallarme 
until  I  have  seen  it,  and  his  letter  ought  to  be  an- 
swered at  once,  and  I  don't  know  when  I  shall 
return  to  town. 

I  was  naturally  delighted  with  your  equally  able 
and  friendly  article  on  my  essays.  Very  likely  I 
have  said  some  extravagant  things  about  Rossetti, 
but,  as  a  translator,  I  do  still  deliberately  regard 
him  as  unparalleled.  Shelley  is,  no  doubt,  fully  as 

202 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

beautiful  a  workman  in  that  line,  but  as  inaccurate 
as  R.  is  accurate. 

Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

I  am  writing  in  bed,  being  laid  up  with  a  lame 
foot  which  I  sprained  very  badly  four  days  since, 
and  have  been  (and  am  still)  unable  all  this  time 
to  put  it  to  the  ground  without  awful  pain-r-so 
excuse  pothooks. — A.  C.  S. 


LETTER  CI 

To  STEPHANE  MALLARME 

Holmzvood, 

Henley-on-Thames, 

Mercredi,  ^  Juillet,  1875. 

MONSIEUR  ET  CHER  CONFRERE  (permettez  que  je 
vous  adresse  de  cette  fac^on  mes  remerciements). 

Je  viens  de  recevoir  a  1'instant  le  livre  magni- 
fique1  que,  vous  et  M.  Manet,  vous  avez  bien  voulu 
m'envoyer  par  les  mains  de  M.  Bonaparte-Wyse, 
qui  1'a  remis  a  un  jeune  poe'te  de  mes  amis,  M.  Ed- 
mund Gosse ;  celui-ci  de  son  cote  s'est  charge  de  me 

1  Le  Corbeau  d'Edgar  Poef  illustre  de  5  dessins  de  Manet, 
texte  anglais  et  frangais.  Paris:  Librairie  de  1'eau  forte,  1874. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

le  transmettre  de  Londres  en  province,  et  je  viens 
de  parcourir  avec  le  plus  vif  interet  ces  pages  mer- 
veilleuses  ou  le  premier  poete  americain  se  trouve 
deux  fois  si  parfaitement  traduit,  grace  a  la  col- 
laboration de  deux  grands  artistes.  II  y  a  main- 
tenant  douze  ans — c'etait  au  printemps  de  1863— 
que  je  fus  conduit  chez  M.  Manet  par  mes  amis 
MM.  Whistler  et  Fantin;  lui  sans  doute  ne  s'en 
souvient  pas,  mais  moi,  alors  tres  jeune  et  tout  a 
fait  inconnu  (sinon  a  quelques  amis  intimes) 
comme  poete  ou  du  moins  comme  aspirant  a  ce  nom, 
vous  croyez  bien  que  ce  fut  pour  moi  un  souvenir 
qui  ne  s'envolerait  pas  facilement.  Je  suis  heureux 
de  voir  1'annonce  de  la  traduction  complete  des 
poesies  de  Poe  que  vous  devez  accompagner  d'une 
preface  de  votre  main.  Vous  avez  peutetre  deja 
vu  1'excellent  travail  de  M.  John  Ingram,  un  des 
plus  fideles  admirateurs  d'Edgar  Poe,  qui  vient 
enfin  de  reduire  en  poudre  tout  le  tas  de  mensonges 
et  de  calomnies  forgees  ou  rassemblees  par  cet  in- 
fame  Griswold,1 

"Dont  le  nom  n'est  plus  qu'un  vomitif." 

II  n'a  pas  laisse  debout  une  seule  des  charges  por- 
tees  centre  le  poete  mort  par  ce  reverend  coquin  que 

1  In  1850,  a  minor  writer  of  America,  Rufus  W.  Griswold, 
who  had  a  personal  spite  against  Poe,  published  a  Memoir  of 
Edgar  Poe,  which  was  full  of  malignity  and  untruth.  His 
malicious  misrepresentations  were  not  exposed  for  many  years. 

204 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Baudelaire  avait  si  bien  qualifie  de  "pedagogue- 
vampire." 

Veuillez  agreer,  vous  et  M.  Manet,  Pexpression 
de  ma  reconnaissance  et  de  mon  admiration. 
ALGERNON  CH.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CII 
To  WILLIAM  SMITH  WILLIAMS 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

July  \1th,  1875. 

DEAR  SIR, 

Many  thanks  for  your  note  enclosing  an- 
other from  Mr.  Wells,  to  whom  I  shall  be  much 
obliged  if  you  will  convey  my  thanks  and  ac- 
knowledgment. 

I  shall  count  it  as  great  an  honour  as  it  will  be 
a  pleasure  to  me  if  any  use  is  to  be  made  of  my 
article  in  The  Fortnightly  Review  on  his  great 
poem,  or  my  name  to  be  in  any  way  connected  with 
its  reissue.  The  article  as  it  stands  would  of  course 
not  do  for  an  Introduction  or  Preface  to  the  book 
from  which  it  gives  such  copious  extracts;  but  if 
these  were  simply  omitted,  and  references  sub- 
stituted to  each  passage  as  it  appeared  in  the  new 

205 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

edition,  I  think  all  purposes  would  be  served,  and 
the  discrepancy  mentioned  by  Mr.  Wells  between 
at  least  one  passage  as  cited  by  me  from  the  text 
of  the  manuscript  since  lost,  and  the  same  passage 
as  now  rewritten,  would  be  obviated  by  the  disap- 
pearance of  the  quotation  from  my  text. 

I  wish  the  Introduction  were  worthier  of  the 
poem  introduced;  but  having  carefully  revised  and 
corrected  it  both  by  excision  and  amplification  be- 
fore its  appearance  in  print — for  in  its  original 
state  it  was  written  long  ago,  I  think  about  the  year 
I  left  college,  and  being  doubtless  juvenile  enough 
in  style,  needed  some  recasting  throughout — I  think 
it  is  now  as  good  as  I  could  make  it  without  fur- 
ther expansion ;  and  certainly  it  is  quite  long  enough 
for  the  prologue  or  proclamation  of  a  mere  out- 
sider or  heraldic  satellite. 

It  is  therefore  at  the  publisher's  service  for  re- 
production, either  in  part  or  altogether  (the  long 
excerpts,  as  aforesaid,  being  cancelled  or  curtailed, 
and  no  other  alteration  being  necessary,  unless  it 
might  be  thought  well  that  a  few  lines  should  be 
added  at  the  end) ,  if  Mr.  Wells  and  yourself  really 
think  it  worthy  of  the  honour,  and  worth  while 
reprinting  at  the  head  of  so  noble  a  poem. 

Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


206 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CIII 
To  PAUL  H.  HAYNE 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
July  22nd,  1875. 

DEAR  SIR, 

I  received  your  letter  with  pleasure,  and 
am  sincerely  obliged  by  your  kind  offer  of  Poe's 
autograph,  which  I  should  much  value.  Let  me 
heartily  congratulate  you  on  the  honour  of  having 
been  the  first  to  set  on  foot  the  project  of  a  monu- 
ment to  that  wonderful,  exquisite  poet.  It  was 
time  that  America  should  do  something  to  show 
public  reverence  for  the  only  one  (as  yet)  among 
her  men  of  genius  who  has  won  not  merely  English 
but  European  fame.  As  perhaps  you  know,  Poe 
is  even  more  popular  and  in  general  more  highly 
rated,  in  France  than  in  England;  thanks  to  the 
long,  arduous,  and  faithful  labour  of  his  brother- 
poet  and  translator,  my  poor  friend,  Charles  Bau- 
delaire. 

On  your  very  flattering  estimate  of  my  own 
work  I  have,  of  course,  no  remark  to  offer;  but 
you  may  be  sure  that  the  sympathy  expressed  in 
your  letter  was  not  lost  upon  me,  and  that  the 
knowledge  that  I  have  made  myself  friends  in  the 
backwoods  (as  you  say)  of  America,  is  much 

207 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

more  to  me  than  any  average  laudatory  review. 

Mr.  Stedman's  article,  which  you  sent  me  some 
time  since,  is  very  far  above  such  average;  I  read 
it  with  much  genuine  pleasure  and  admiration  of 
his  fine  critical  faculty  and  excellent  style.  One 
passage  only  renews  a  sense  of  disappointment, 
which  I  have  felt  before  now,  both  in  the  writing 
and  the  conversation  of  American  friends  and  au- 
thors ;  the  lack  of  sympathy  with  us  of  the  repub- 
lican party  in  Europe,  who  are  struggling  to  win 
what  you  have  won.  To  use  the  old  Catholic 
phrase,  applied  to  the  Church  on  earth  and  the 
Church  in  heaven:  the  Republic  militant  has  sure- 
ly some  right  to  the  good-will  at  least  and  fellow- 
feeling  of  the  Republic  triumphant.  But  of  all 
your  eminent  men  I  know  none  but  Whitman  who 
has  said  a  good  word  for  us,  sent  us  a  message  of 
sympathy  nobly  conceived  and  worthily  expressed, 
paid  in  a  memorial  tribute  to  the  countless  heroes 
and  martyrs  of  our  cause.  You  see,  therefore,  that 
Mr.  Stedman's  comparative  depreciation  of  my 
Songs  before  Sunrise,  at  least  his  preference  of  my 
other  books  to  this  one,  could  not  but  somewhat 
disappoint  me.  For  my  other  books  are  books ;  that 
one  is  myself. 

You  must  excuse  this  opinion,  as  you  have 
brought  it  upon  yourself,  and  believe  me, 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 
208 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  CIV 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
August  3rd,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  cannot  wait  for  the  arrival  of  your  ar- 
ticle on  Herrick  (to  which  I  look  forward  with 
great  satisfaction,  and  send  my  thanks  for  it  in 
advance)  to  offer  you  my  most  sincere  congratula- 
tions and  most  cordial  good  wishes  on  and  for  your 
wedding  day.  I  hope  before  the  year  is  out  I  may 
have  the  pleasure  of  meeting  for  the  first  time  Mrs. 
Gosse,  and  thereby  of  renewing  my  acquaintance 
with  a  lady  whose  previous  name  will  then  be  non- 
existent. I  wish  you  all  the  joy  and  good  fortune 
that  can  be  wished,  and  without  admixture  of  envy 
of  that  particular  form  of  happiness  which  I  am 
now  never  likely  to  share.  I  suppose  it  must  be 
the  best  thing  that  can  befall  a  man,  to  win  and 
keep  the  woman  that  he  loves  while  yet  young; 
at  any  rate  I  can  congratulate  my  friend  on  his 
good  hap,  without  any  too  jealous  afterthought  of 

209 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

the  reverse  experience  which  left  my  own  young 
manhood  "a  barren  stock" — if  I  may  cite  that 
phrase  without  seeming  to  liken  myself  to  a  male 
Queen  Elizabeth. 

The  prints  came  quite  safe,  and  I  wrote  a  letter 
of  due  acknowledgment  to  M.  Mallarme  (whose 
translation  1  is  very  exquisite)  recalling  the  fact 
that  twelve  years  since  I  visited  Manet's  studio  in 
Paris  with  our  common  friends  Whistler  and  Fan- 
tin. 

I  shall  anticipate  with  real  pleasure  as  well  as 
with  high  hope  the  advent  of  your  tragedy.2  To 
whom  have  you  sent  it?  I  am  much  honoured  by 
the  prospect  of  a  translation  into  Danish  of  the 
Songs,  which  were  cut  off  from  their  prospect  of 
a  fuller  Italian  version  by  the  sudden  death  of 
the  translator  (Pr.  Maggi  of  Milan)  when  he  had 
only  done  into  the  verse  of  their  second  mother- 
country,  and  by  adoption  my  own,  one  or  two  of  the 
shorter  among  them. 

I  was  very  much  pleased  by  the  article  on  Camp- 
bell in  The  Examiner,  though  not  quite  agreeing 
with  your  high  estimate  of  some  of  his  minor  bal- 
lads and  songs:  but  that  is  the  right  side  on  which 
to  exceed,  and  with  the  tone  of  the  whole  I  most 

1  The  Poems  of  Poe,  translated  into  French  prose  by  Stephane 
Mallarme,  with  illustrations  by  Manet. 

2  King  Erik. 

210 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

heartily  sympathise.  It  did  one  good  to  read  it, 
after  W.  Rossetti's  and  other  depreciations  of  ouj- 
great  (if  not  only)  national  lyric  poet.  Of  his  two 
master-pieces  I  should  have  spoken  even  more  pas- 
sionately than  yourself;  for  the  simple  fact  is  that 
I  know  nothing  like  them  at  all — "simile  aut  secun- 
dum" — in  their  own  line,  which  is  one  of  the  very 
highest  in  the  highest  range  of  poetry.  What  little 
of  national  verse  is  as  good  patriotically,  is  far  in- 
ferior poetically — witness  Burns  and  Rouget  de 
Tlsle;  and  what  little  in  that  line  might  satisfy  us 
better  as  poetry  than  the  Marseillaise  or  Scots  wha 
hae,  is  pitifully  wanting  in  the  nerve  which  thrills 
by  contact  all  the  blood  of  all  their  hearers,  boys 
and  men,  students  and  soldiers,  poets  and  dullards, 
with  one  common  and  divine  touch  of  unquencha- 
ble fire.  Next  to  Campbell  of  course  is  Callicles, 
but  even  the  old  Attic  song  of  tyrannicide  is  even 
to  me  not  quite  so  triumphant  a  proof  of  the  worth 
and  weight  of  poetry  in  national  matters.  All  this 
and  many  things  more  I  should  myself  have  liked 
to  say  in  public;  but  I  could  not  have  held  myself 
in  if  I  had  reviewed  the  new  edition;  I  must  have 
smitten  Allingham  hip  and  thigh,  and  made  him 
as  the  princes  "who  perished  at  Endor,  and  became 
as" — "poeticules  who  decompose  into  criticasters" 
(I  have  mentioned  "the  dung  of  the  earth"). 
Vale  et  me  ama — after  marriage  as  before.  It 

211 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

was  very  good  of  you  to  think  of  writing  at  such 
a  time. 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CV 
To  RAPHAEL  PERIE 

Ashfield  House, 
West  Malvern, 

Vendredi,  27  aoiit,  1875. 

MONSIEUR, 

Je  regrette  vivement  de  ne  pas  me  trou- 
ver  en  ce  moment  a  Londres,  afin  de  pouvoir  vous 
remercier  de  vive  voix  des  beaux  vers  que  vous 
avez  eu  la  bonte  de  m'envoyer  et  que  j'ai  lus  avec 
un  grand  interet  et  une  veritable  sympathie.  Prive 
de  ce  plaisir  par  une  absence  malencontreuse,  je 
ne  saurais  mieux  vous  exprimer  mes  remerciments 
qu'en  repondant  de  mon  mieux  aux  demandes  que 
vous  m'adressez.  Je  crains  neanmoins  que  mes  ren- 
seignements  assez  imparfaits  ne  vous  soient  que 
d'une  mediocre  utilite. 

i°     Les  seules  photographies  que  je  connaisse 
de  Walt  Whitman  sont  celles  qu'on  a  publiees  en 

212 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Amerique  et  que  le  vieux  poete  m'a  lui-meme  ex- 
pediees.  Je  crois  cependant  que  mon  editeur  actuel, 
M.  A.  Chatto  (Piccadilly,  75),  pourrait  vous  ren- 
seigner  a  ce  sujet.  II  a  public  en  Angleterre  les 
poesies  completes  de  Whitman,  et  il  doit  sans  doute 
savoir  si  Ton  peut  se  procurer  de  ces  photographies 
a  Londres; 

2°  Je  crois  que  Whitman  a  public  depuis  1872 
une  petite  brochure  poetique  As  a  strong  bird  on 
pinions  free  qui  n'a  point  reparu  en  Angleterre, 
mais  que  Chatto  pourrait  probablement  vous  pro- 
curer; 

3°  Les  oauvres  d'Emerson  me  sont  tres  peu  con- 
nues,  et,  je  dois  vous  1'avouer,  assez  peu  sympa- 
thiques:  je  ne  sais  seulement  pas  ce  qu'en  comprend 
1'edition  de  Bohn.  J'ai  entendu  dire  qu'il  se  pro- 
pose de  faire  paraitre  un  nouveau  travail  sur  la 
litterature ; 

4°  Parmi  les  livres  qui  ont  recemment  paru  en 
Angleterre  je  n'en  connais  aucun  de  tres  remarqu- 
able;  mais  quant  aux  revues,  je  crois  pouvoir  vous 
donner  meilleurs  renseignements.  Pour  le  mouve- 
ment  litteraire,  I' Academy  me  parait  la  meilleure 
de  nos  revues  actuelles;  elle  est  fort  bien  dirigee  du 
cote  artistique  et  scientifique,  et  en  tout  ce  qui  re- 
garde  les  questions  purement  litteraires  elle  de- 
passe  facilement  ses  emules  en  journalisme.  L'Ex- 
aminer,  organe  du  parti  radical  ou  plutot  de  la  min- 
orite  republicaine  en  Angleterre,  vous  tiendra 

213 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

mieux  que  tout  autre  journal  au  courant  du  mouve- 
ment  social :  redige  par  des  democrates,  il  envisage 
ces  questions  au  point  de  vue  de  la  democratic,  tan- 
dis  que  les  feuilles  soi-disant  "liberates"  ne  sont 
pour  la  plupart  que  les  organes  de  quelque  petite 
clique  religieuse  et  politique,  moitie  doctrinaire, 
moitie  clericale.  Ce  journal  est  aussi  fort  bien 
redige  du  cote  litteraire,  mais  ce  n'est  point  la  son 
metier  special ;  toutefois  son  redacteur  actuel *  est 
un  des  meilleurs  et  des  plus  savants  parmi  nos 
jeunes  litterateurs;  il  a  public  une  etude  remarqu- 
able  sur  la  vieille  poesie  anglaise,  depuis  ses  com- 
mencements, jusqu'a  1'ere  de  Shakespeare  et  de  ses 
grandes  camarades  en  art. 

Ces  deux  revues  sont  hebdomadaires;  La  Fort- 
nightly Review  paraissait  a  son  commencement  a 
la  quinzaine,  ainsi  que  1'annonce  toujours  son  titre 
depuis  longtemps  menteur;  c'est  maintenant  une 
revue  mensuelle,  libre  penseuse  et  democratique  de 
son  naturel,  mais  se  tenant  ouverte  aux  debats  pol- 
itiques  et  litteraires.  Son  editeur,  M.  John  Mor- 
ley,  ajoute  a  ce  moment  a  ses  admirables  etudes  sur 
Voltaire  et  Rousseau  un  nouveau  travail  non  moins 
remarquable  sur  Diderot,  qui,  je  1'espere,  fera  con- 
naitre  pour  la  premiere  fois  en  Angleterre  ce  grand 
homme. 

Voila,  monsieur,  les  meilleurs  avis  que  je  saurais 

1  William  Minto  (1845-93)  edited  The  Examiner  from 
1874  to  1878. 

214 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

vous  donner  a  cet  egard :  je  voudrais  pouvoir  aussi 
vous  envoyer  un  serrement  de  main  en  temoignage 
de  reconnaissance  et  d'amitie.  Merci  encore  une 
fois  de  votre  lettre  fraternelle  et  de  vos  belles  et 
puissantes  stances. 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CVI 

To  EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

September  8/A,  1875. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  STEDMAN, 

Many  thanks  for  both  your  letters,  the 
first  received  about  a  month  since,  the  second  just 
arrived  enclosing  the  friendly  notice  communicated 
to  the  Tribune.  I  am  sincerely  grateful  for  this 
and  all  your  good  offices,  and  look  forward  with 
even  more  interest  than  before  to  the  appearance 
of  your  book  in  its  final  state. 

I  read  your  former  letter  very  carefully  and 
have  since  re-read  a  good  deal  of  Emerson's  first 
volume  of  poems  therein  mentioned,  which  cer- 
tainly contains  noble  verses  and  passages  well  worth 
remembering.  I  hope  that  no  personal  feeling  or 

215 


consideration  will  ever  prevent  or  impair  my  rec- 
ognition of  any  man's  higher  qualities.  In  Whittier 
the  power  and  pathos  and  righteousness  (to  use 
a  great  old  word  which  should  not  be  left  to  the 
pulpiteers)  of  noble  emotion  would  be  more  en- 
joyable and  admirable  if  he  were  not  so  deplor- 
ably ready  to  put  up  with  the  first  word,  good  or 
bad,  that  comes  to  hand,  and  to  run  on  long  after 
he  is  out  of  breath.  For  Mr.  Lowell's  verse  when 
out  of  the  Biglow  costume,  I  could  never  bring  my- 
self to  care  at  all.  I  believe  you  know  my  theory 
that  nothing  which  can  possibly  be  as  'well  said 
in  prose  ought  ever  to  be  said  in  verse. 

I  sincerely  hope  that  your  own  health  and  af- 
fairs will  enable  you  to  pursue  our  common  art 
with  full  freedom  and  success  for  many  years  to 
come.  I  may  confess  to  you,  what  I  could  not 
gracefully  or  properly  say  in  public,  that  I  think 
but  little  of  Tennyson's  play,1  though  it  has  one 
good  song  and  one  good  scene  at  least.  I  am  writ- 
ing a  Greek  tragedy,2  which  I  mean  to  be  more 
purely  Hellenic  and  perhaps  more  universal  (so 
to  speak)  in  its  relation  to  human  thought  and 
emotion  than  was  Atalanta.  The  fusion  of  lyric 
with  dramatic  form  gives  the  highest  type  of  poetry 
I  know;  and  I  always  feel  the  Greek  history  and 
mythology  (in  its  deeper  sense  and  wider  bearing) 
much  nearer  to  us  even  yet  than  those  of  the  Jews, 

1  Queen  Mary.  2  Erechtheus. 

2l6 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

alien  from  us  in  blood  and  character.  Even  the 
poet  of  Job  is  a  Semitic  alien,  while  the  poet  of 
Prometheus  is  an  Aryan  kinsman  of  our  own:  his 
national  history  of  far  more  real  importance  to  us, 
his  poetry  far  closer  to  our  own  thought,  passion, 
speculation,  conscience,  than  the  Hebrew.  This  ar- 
gument, if  necessary,  I  may  perhaps  expand  into  a 
vindication  of  my  choice  in  taking  up  what  may 
seem,  but  is  not  and  should  not  be,  a  remote  and 
obsolete  theme  to  work  upon. 

It  may  interest  you,  as  it  gratified  me,  to  read 
the  following  excerpt  from  a  letter  of  Wm.  Ros- 
setti,  who  with  a  rare  generosity  has  forgiven  my 
too  sincere  but  I  must  think  deserved  strictures  on 
some  of  his  misdemeanours  as  editor  of  Shelley. 

"(6  Aug.]  Old  Trelawny  is  extraordinarily  de- 
lighted with  your  Essay  on  Shelley — indeed  with 
your  book  *  generally;  vows  that  nobody  ever  did 
justice  to  or  understand  S.  before  you ; — he  has  en- 
larged on  these  matters  to  me  any  number  of  times 
these  two  months,  and  yesterday  he  specially  asked 
me  to  let  you  know  and  convey  his  thanks  for 
the  book.  He  has  written  down  various  additional 
reminiscences  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  and  seems 
really  disposed  to  reissue  his  book,2  with  these  ad- 
ditions included." 

1  Essays  and  Studies. 

2  Recollections  of  the  Last  Days  of  Shelley  and  Byron,  1858 
[one  vol.].    Enlarged  and  reissued  as  Records  of  Shelley,  Byron, 
and  the  Author,  1878  [two  vols.]. 

217 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

With  which  piece  of  good  news  I  will  leave  off, 
and  remain 

Ever  faithfully  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CVII 
To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

South  House, 

Southivold, 

Wangford. 
October  1st,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  was  very  glad  to  get  your  note  and  the 
Danish  translation  of  my  study,  which  latter  has 
only  just  reached  me.  I  enclose  as  you  suggest 
a  word  of  acknowledgment  to  the  translator1  (as 
you  only  mention  his  surname,  I  don't  know  how  to 
address  it),  though  it  is  rather  a  task  to  say  any- 
thing when  you  cannot  read  a  word  of  the  lan- 
guage in  which  an  offering  of  the  kind  is  couched. 
But  I  must  try  to  borrow  somewhat  of  the  divine 
daring  of  our  mighty  master,  and  respond  as  frank- 
ly as  Hugo  does  to  tributes  of  English  verse  and 
prose. 

I  presume  that  you  received  some  two  months 

1  Dr.  Adolf  Hansen. 
218 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

since  my  letter  of  congratulation  in  answer  to  that 
announcing  your  marriage.  I  am  very  glad  to 
hear  of  your  return  from  the  honeymoon,  and  con- 
gratulate you  afresh  on  your  new  appointment 
which  I  saw  with  great  pleasure  announced  in  the 
newspapers,  and  am  happy  to  hear  it  is  so  good 
a  thing  for  you  in  the  way  of  time  saved  as  well 
as  increase  of  income. 

I  read  your  Herrick  with  interest  and  pleasure, 
and  thought  it  very  well  and  gracefully  done,  and 
as  fresh  as  perhaps  anything  can  now  be  on  the 
subject.  I  shall  have  a  good  deal  to  show  my  friends 
when  I  next  return  to  town  (I  leave  this  place  in 
a  fortnight),  and  hope  to  hear  that  you  too  have 
got  some  good  work  done.  I  am  always  interested 
to  hear  of  the  progress  of  your  play. 

Remember  me  to  Mrs.  Gosse,  and  believe 

me  ever, 

Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


219 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

. 

LETTER  CVIII 
To  SARA  SIGOURNEY  RICE 

November  gth,  [1875]. 

DEAR  MADAME, 

I  have  heard  with  much  pleasure  of  the 
memorial  at  length  to  be  raised  to  your  illustri- 
ous fellow-citizen.  The  genius  of  Edgar  Poe  has 
won  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  such  wide  and 
warm  recognition  that  the  sympathy  which  I  can- 
not hope  fitly  or  fully  to  express  in  adequate  words 
is  undoubtedly  shared  at  this  moment  by  hundreds 
as  far  as  the  news  may  have  spread  throughout  not 
England  only  but  France  as  well;  where  as  I  need 
not  remind  you  the  most  beautiful  and  durable  of 
monuments  has  been  reared  to  the  genius  of  Poe 
by  the  laborious  devotion  of  a  genius  equal  and  akin 
to  his  own;  and  where  the  admirable  translation 
of  his  prose  works  by  a  fellow-poet,  whom  also  we 
have  now  to  lament  before  his  time,  is  even  now 
being  perfected  by  a  careful  and  exquisite  version 
of  his  poems,  with  illustrations  full  of  the  subtle 
and  tragic  force  which  impelled  and  moulded  the 
original  song;  a  double  homage  due  to  the  loyal  and 
loving  co-operation  of  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
younger  poets  and  one  of  the  most  powerful  lead- 

220 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ing  painters  in  France — M.  Mallarme  and  M.  Ma- 
net. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  offer  any  tribute  here  to  the 
fame  of  your  great  countryman,  or  to  dilate  with 
superfluous  and  intrusive  admiration  on  the  special 
quality  of  his  strong  and  delicate  genius,  so  sure 
of  aim  and  faultless  of  touch  in  all  the  better  and 
finer  points  of  work  he  has  left  us.  I  would  only, 
in  conveying  to  the  members  of  the  Poe  Memorial 
Committee  my  sincere  acknowledgment  of  the  hon- 
our they  have  done  me  in  recalling  my  name  on 
such  an  occasion,  take  leave  to  express  my  firm  con- 
viction that  widely  as  the  fame  of  Poe  has  already 
spread,  and  deeply  as  it  is  already  rooted  in  Eu- 
rope, it  is  even  now  growing  wider  and  striking 
deeper  as  time  advances;  the  surest  presage  that 
time,  the  eternal  enemy  of  small  and  shallow  rep- 
utations, will  prove  in  this  case  also  the  constant 
and  trusty  friend  and  keeper  of  a  true  poet's  full- 
grown  fame. 

I  remain,  Dear  Madame, 

Yours  very  truly, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


221 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CIX 
To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

Nov.  28th,  775. 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

I  return  the  enclosed  as  you  desire.  I 
am  not  sure  whether  I  shall  have  leisure  or  in- 
clination to  treat  of  so  great  a  subject  within  the 
space  and  under  the  circumstances  proffered,  but 
if  I  should  I  trust  that  whatever  I  sent  would  be 
"a  good  letter,"  in  your  correspondent's  phrase.  I 
have  several  shorter  or  longer  lyrics  in  MS.,  which 
I  should  not  mind  disposing  of  in  the  Athenaum 
or  elsewhere  before  they  are  gathered  into  a  vol- 
ume. 

There  is  no  "secret"  about  my  forthcoming  poem, 
which  I  hope  will  be  in  print  by  next  month's  end. 
It  is  a  play  on  the  Greek  model,  more  regular  than 
Atalanta;  the  title  Erechtheus,  the  length  a  little 
over  1,700  lines.  I  mean  to  read  it  before  publica- 
tion to  a  few  friends,  and  shall  be  very  glad  if  you 
can  make  one  of  the  party.  I  come  to  town  to-mor- 
row (Monday)  for  some  three  weeks  at  least. 

I  see  the  Athenaum  gives  high  praise  to  Brown- 
ing's new  "sensation  novel."  It  is  a  fine  study  in  the 

222 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

later  manner  of  Balzac,  and  I  always  think  the 
great  English  analyst  greatest  as  he  comes  nearest 
in  matter  and  procedure  to  the  still  greater  French- 
man. 

Ever  yours, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CX 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
January  2nd,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  must  send  back  a  word  of  acknowledg- 
ment for  your  New  Year's  note,  with  all  good 
wishes  for  1876  to  both  of  you. 

I  am  glad  you  find  Erechtheus  hold  his  own  on 
further  acquaintance.  Is  he  and  am  I  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  any  public  recognition  at  your 
hands?  "A  question  which  I  never  asked  before," 
like  Sir  Christopher  Hatton:  but  you  are  one  of 
the  very  few  critics  whose  reviews  I  care  to  read 
for  any  other  reason  than  the  amusement  to  be 

223 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

derived  from  such  well-meant  articles  as  that  in 
yesterday's  Athenaum.  "A  translation  from  Eurip- 
ides" !!!!!!!  when  a  fourth  form  boy  could 
see  that  as  far  as  it  can  be  said  to  be  modelled 
after  anybody,  it  is  modelled  throughout  after  the 
earliest  style  of  ^Eschylus — the  simple,  three-parts- 
epic  style  of  the  Suppliants,  Persians,  and  Seven 
against  Thebes:  the  most  radically  contrary  style 
to  that  of  the  scenic  sophist  (with  his  "droppings," 
as  Mrs.  Browning  aptly  rather  than  delicately  puts 
it1)  that  could  possibly  be  conceived. 

I  should  very  much  like  to  see  the  play  of  Eurip- 
ides which  contains  500  consecutive  lines  that 
could  be  set  against  as  many  of  mine.  I  did  intro- 
duce (instead  of  a  hint  and  a  verse  or  two  acknowl- 
edged in  my  Notes)  a  good  deal  of  the  "long  and 
noble  fragment"  referred  to,  into  Praxithea's  first 
long  speech — but  the  translated  verses  (I  must  say 
it)  were  so  palpably  and  pitiably  inferior  both  in 
thought  and  expression  to  the  rest  that  the  first 
persons  I  read  that  part  of  the  play  to  in  MS., 
knowing  nothing  of  Greek  (and  not  being  review- 
ers they  made  no  pretence  to  the  knowledge)  re- 
marked the  falling  off  at  once — the  discrepancy, 

1  Our  Euripides,  the  human — 

With  his  droppings  of  warm  tears; 
And  his  touches  of  things  common, 
Till  they  rose  to  touch  the  spheres! 

[WiNE  OF  CYPRUS,  1844,  Stanza  12.] 
224 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

and  blot  on  the  face  of  my  work — so  I  excised  the 
sophist — wiped  up  and  carted  off  his  "droppings" 
— only  keeping  a  hint  or  two,  and  one  or  two  of  his 
best  lines.  If  this  sounds  "outrecuidant"  or  savour- 
ing of  "surquedry,"  you  may  remember  that  I 
always  have  maintained  it  is  far  easier  to  overtop 
Euripides  by  the  head  and  shoulders  than  to  come 
up  to  the  waist  of  Sophocles  or  the  knee  of 
^Eschylus. 

"Sympathetic  touch  which  distinguishes  the 
sophist  from  the  two — there  are  but  two — tragic 
poets"!  Have  such  critics  neither  eyes  nor  ears? 
Or  is  there  really  a  human  reader  who  does  actually 
find  Phcedra,  Hecuba,  Medea,  Iphigenia,  more 
pathetic  than  Antigone,  or  the  Oresteia?  To  pre- 
fer Bonduca  to  Hamlet,  or  The  False  One  to  Othel- 
lo, is  (I  had  almost  said)  a  venial  absurdity  in  com- 
parison; at  least,  the  one  folly  is  the  precise  coun- 
terpart of  the  other.  And  then — the  "prodigality 
of  splendid  imagery  such  as  finds  no  place"  (heav- 
ens and  earth!)  "in  Greek  literature"!  !  !  Well,  it 
certainly  doesn't  in  Euripides,  who  was  troubled 
with  a  dysentery  of  feeble  imagination  and  a  diar- 
rhoea of  rhetorical  sophistry:  but  has  the  man  never 
looked  into  a  "crib"  of  Pindar?  say,  Bohn's  crib, 
in  which  Mr.  Emerson  gets  up  his  Plato?  Why, 
Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  were  timid,  reserved,  costive, 
hide-bound,  in  the  way  of  "imagery,"  compared  to 
Pindar  and  ^Eschylus — the  two  Greeks  whom,  if  I 

225 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

must  not  say  I  have  tried  to  follow,  I  must  say 
I  always  read  with  the  most  passionate  sympathy 
and  magnetic  attraction  to  the  thought  and  utter- 
ance alike  that  any  poet  ever  puts  into  me.  Take 
any  great  ode  of  Pindar's,  and  in  the  way  of  wealth 
and  profusion  and  oppression  of  inexhaustible 
imagery,  I  greatly  fear  my  battle  Chorus  will  read 
as  flat  and  tame  after  it  as  Longfellow  after  Shelley. 

That  chorus  seems  to  have  produced  on  The 
Spectator  the  exact  effect  I  intended;  but  isn't 
it  characteristic  to  fasten  on  the  one  word  "awe- 
less,"  assume  that  it  means  "irreverent,"  and  pin 
to  it  a  screed  of  doctrine  enlarging  on  the  incom- 
patibility of  such  an  epilogue  to  such  a  poem?  The 
fact  that  the  poem  is  throughout  (as  he  admits) 
imbued  with  awe  and  reverence  towards  the  moral 
and  religious  law  of  nature  (not  of  theology)  I 
should  have  thought  enough  to  prove  that  this  one 
word  could  not  be  used  in  a  sense  so  inconsistent 
with  all  the  rest.  But,  of  course,  a  sermon  was 
necessary. 

I  did  not  mean  to  trouble  you  with  so  long  and 
certainly  not  with  so  egoistic  an  epistle:  but  it  is 
the  fault  of  your  sympathy  with  my  work,  and  I 
must  count  upon  that  to  excuse  it,  even  though  I 
add  that  I  hope  you  will  like  (what  I  think  you 
have  not  seen  or  heard)  my  little  poem  in  two  son- 
nets on  Newman  and  Carlyle  (as  you  will,  of 
course,  at  once  perceive,  though  no  names  are  men- 

226 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

tioned),  in  the  next  Athenaum.  "Childless"  they 
certainly  are:  for  the  Church  or  the  God  of  the 
Past  is  not  likely  ever  again  to  enlist  such  a  recruit 
as  Newman,  and  any  possible  heir  to  the  theories, 
would  assuredly  not  be  heir  to  the  genius,  of  Car- 
lyle. 

I  should  like  to  know  what  you  think  of  my  study 
on  King  John  now  published  in  The  Fortnightly; 
of  the  companion  study  on  Henry  8thf  I  remember 
that  I  once  read  you  the  greater  part.  Observe  that 
there  are  four  damnable  misprints  in  the  article: 
p.  28  "comic  or  prosaic  sense  alone"  for  scenes;  p. 
29  "equally — as  to  a  poet"  instead  of  "or  to  a  poet," 
etc.;  p.  30  (two  lines  from  bottom)  "forms  of  ac- 
cent" for  turns;  and  p.  44  "tedious  and  traceless 
verse"  instead  of  tuneless.  (I  know  I  corrected 
this  in  the  proof!) 

Yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


227 


SWINBURNE'S  LETTERS 

LETTER  CXI l 

To  STEPHANE  MALLARME 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 
13,  Janvier,  1876. 

CHER  MONSIEUR, 

Voici  deja  dix  jours  que  je  differe  les 
remerciements  que  j'aurais  du  vous  adresser  le  jour 
meme  de  1'an,  en  recevant  comme  etrennes  vos 
paroles  cordiales  et  chargees  d'une  invitation  si 
flatteuse  qu'elle  caresse  en  moi  quelque  chose  de 
meilleur,  je  1'espere,  qu'un  vain  orgueil.  J'ai  tou- 
jours  senti  que  les  liens  de  race  et  de  reconnaissance 
qui  rattachent  a  la  France  les  rejetons  d'une  famille 
autrefois  proscrite  par  nos  guerres  civiles,  qui  a 
deux  fois  et  pendant  des  generations  entieres  trouve 
en  elle  une  nouvelle  mere-patrie,  me  donnaient  le 
droit  de  reclamer  ma  part  de  joie  ou  de  douleur 
dans  toutes  ses  gloires  et  dans  tous  ses  malheurs; 
mais  jamais  je  n'aurais  songe  a  reclamer  la  place 
que  vous  voulez  bien  m'accorder  parmi  ses 2  poetes 
contemporains.  C'est  vous  dire  combien  je  serai 

1  This  letter,  together  with  the  Nocturne  which  accompanied 
it,  was  published  in  La  Republique  des  Lettres,  2O  Fevrier,  1876. 
The  Nocturne  itself  was  reprinted  in  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second 
Series,  1878,  pp.  227-229. 

2  Mallarme  altered  "parmi"  to  "aupres  de." 

228 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

fier  de  me  trouver  votre  collaborateur,  et  combien 
je  suis  heureux  de  vous  adresser,  comme  a  M.  Men- 
des,  les  graces  que  je  vous  dois  d'avoir  songe  a  moi 
en  fondant  votre  revue.1  On  m'a  dit  que  M.  Men- 
des  avait  public  il  y  a  quelques  ans  une  etude  sur 
mes  poesies  que  je  n'ai  pu  jusqu'ici  me  procurer 
par  le  moyen  des  libraires;  je  n'ai  pas  besoin  de 
vous  dire  combien  cette  defaite  m'a  chagrine,  et 
combien  j'ose  encore  esperer  aussi  bien  que  sou- 
haiter  de  lire  un  jour  ce  qu'un  poe'te  dont  j'admire 
ardemment  le  talent  exquis 2  a  bien  voulu  dire  de 
moi  a  notre  France — permettez-moi  le  mot,  en 
faveur  de  la  parente  dont  j'ai  deja  eu  1'egoisme  de 
me  vanter. 

Je  vous  envoie  un  petit  poe'me  d'un  genre  que  je 
croyais  nouveau  quand  je  1'ai  fait,  mais  dont  je 
crois  avoir  depuis  vu  des  echantillons  en  frangais 
comme  en  italien.  Apres  avoir  introduit  dans  la 
poesie  anglaise  cette  forme  qui  m'avait  plu  surtout 
dans  la  traduction  faite  par  M.  Rossetti  d'un  poe'me 
apocryphe  de  Dante — en  y  ajoutant  1'entrecroise- 
ment  des  rimes  a  chaque  strophe,  ce  qui  m'a 
paru  de  toute  necessite  pour  une  sextlne  8  ecrite 
dans  une  langue  moins  douce  que  celle  de  ses  in- 
venteurs — je  me  suis  hasarde  a  tenter  cette  meme 
entreprise  en  f  rangais.  Maintenant,  j'ai  a  vous  de- 

1  "En  fondant  votre  revue"  was  printed  by  Mallarme  "quand 
se  fonda  la  Republlque  des  Lettres" 

2  The  word  "exquis"  was  omitted  by  Mallarme. 

3  Mallarme  altered  this  word  to  sestine. 

229 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

mander  une  faveur;  c'est  de  me  faire  savoir  s'il  n'y 
a  pas  par  hasard  dans  mes  vers  frangais  quelque 
anglicisme,  quelque  phrase  louche  ou  dure,  quelque 
chose  enfin  qu'un  poete  ne  en  France  ne  se  serait 
point  permis  ou  bien  qu'il  aurait  tout  de  suite  ef- 
face de  son  texte.  Pour  rien  au  monde  je  ne  vou- 
drais  encourir  la  juste  peine  du  ridicule  qui  cha- 
tierait  une  faute  pareille.  Un  ami  m'a  fait  voir 
autrefois  une  lettre,  d'ailleurs  fort  bienveillante  a 
mon  egard,  dans  laquelle  un  eminent  critique  f  ran- 
C.ais  qualifiait  quelques  vers  de  moi  qu'on  lui  avait 
montres  d' efforts  d'un  geant  barbare.  Cette  phrase 
ne  froissa  point  en  moi  une  vanite  ridicule,  mais 
elle  eveilla  une  juste  mefiance  de  moi-meme;  c'est 
pourquoi  je  vous  prie  instamment  de  m'indiquer  la 
moindre  faute  qui  pourrait  frapper  vos  yeux.  Ce 
n'est  qu'a  cette  condition  que  je  pourrais  ecrire  ou 
depecher  avec  confiance  les  contributions  que  je 
voudrais  offrir  a  la  Revue,  dont  j'attends  impati- 
emment  le  premier  numero,  et  plus  impatiemment 
encore  1'arrivee  des  deux  livres  que  vous  voulez 
bien  m'adresser.  J'espere  que  vous  aurez  deja  re£U 
des  mains  de  mon  editeur  1'offrande  du  poeme  hel- 
lenique  *  que  je  viens  de  publier,  et  que  je  1'ai  prie 
de  vous  envoyer  en  mon  nom? 

Croyez,  cher  Monsieur,  a  toutes  mes  sympathies 
et  a  toute  ma  reconnaissance. 

A.  C.  SWINBUJRNE. 

1  Erechtheus. 
230 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

NOCTURNE 

La  nuit  ecoute  et  se  penche  sur  I'onde 
Pour  recueillir  l  rien  qu'un  souffle  d'amour; 
Pas  de  lueur,  pas  de  musique  au  monde, 
Pas  de  sommeil  pour  moi  ni  de  sejour. 
O  mere,  6  Nuit,  de  ta  source  profonde 
Verse-nous,  verse  enfin  I'oubli  du  jour. 

Verse  I'oubli  de  I'angoisse  et  du  jour; 
Chante;  ton  chant  assoupit  I'ame  et  I'onde: 
Fais  de  ton  sein  pour  mon  dme  un  sejour, 
Elle  est  bien  lasse,  6  mere,  de  ce  monde, 
Ou  le  baiser  ne  veut  pas  dire  amour, 
Ou  I'ame  aimee  est  moins  que  toi  profonde. 

Car  toute  chose  aimee  est  moins  profonde, 
O  Nuit,  que  toi,  fille  et  mere  du  jour; 
Toi  dont  I'attente  est  le  repit  du  monde, 
Toi  dont  le  souffle  est  plein  de  mots  d'amour, 
Toi  dont  I'haleine  enfle  et  reprime  I'onde, 
Toi  dont  I' ombre  a  tout  le  del  pour  sejour. 

La  misere  humble  et  lasse,  sans  sejour, 
S'abrite  et  dort  sous  ton  aile  profonde; 
Tu  fais  a  tons  I'aumone  de  I' amour; 
Toutes  les  soifs  viennent  boire  a  ton  onde, 
Tout  ce  qui  pleure  et  se  derobe  au  jour, 
Toutes  les  faims  et  tous  les  maux  du  monde. 

1  In  the  published  text,  y  cueillir. 
231 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

Mot  seul  je  veille  et  ne  vois  dans  ce  monde 
Que  ma  douleur  qui  n'ait  point  de  sejour 
Ou  s'abriter  sur  ta  rive  profonde 
Et  s'endormir  sous  tes  yeux  loin  du  jour; 
Je  vais  toujours  cherchant  au  bord  de  I'onde 
L'orme  *  du  beau  pied  blesse  de  I' amour. 

La  mer  est  sombre  oil  tu  naquis,  Amour, 
Pleine  des  pleurs  et  des  sanglots  du  monde; 
On  ne  voit  plus  les  gouffres  loin  du  jour2 
Luire  et  fremir  sous  ta  lueur  profonde; 
Mais  dans  le  cceurs  d'homme  ou  tu  fais  sejour 
La  douleur  monte  et  baisse  comme  une  onde. 

ENVOI 

Fille  de  I'onde  et  mere  de  I'amour, 

Du  haut  sejour  plein  de  ta  paix  profonde 

Sur  ce  has  monde  epands  un  peu  de  jour. 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE. 

1  It  was  impossible  to  conjecture  what  Swinburn*  meant  by 
the  word  ormet  and  Mallarme  substituted  Le  sang. 

2  Mallarme  altered  this  to  le  gouffre  ou  nait  le  jour. 


232 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  CXII 
To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
January  l^th,  [1876]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  have  read  your  fine  poem  *  through 
from  beginning  to  end,  almost  at  a  sitting,  with  un- 
broken and  unflagging  interest.  I  congratulate  you 
heartily  on  the  accomplishment  of  a  noble  work. 
It  must  raise  your  name  at  once  into  a  higher  and 
clearer  celebrity.  The  story  seems  to  me  in  the 
highest  degree  and  in  the  noblest  sense  tragic  and 
pathetic.  If  the  pretty  tho'  certainly  cumbersome 
old  fashion  of  commendatory  verses  had  been  re- 
tained or  revived  (but  what  would  New  Grub 
Street  not  say,  in  such  a  case,  concerning  "mutual 
admiration"?  I  shudder  to  think)  I  should  have 
liked  to  prefix  a  line  or  two  to  your  tragedy. 

Excellently  as  the  leading  characters  are  con- 
ceived and  sustained  throughout,  I  am  especially 
struck  by  the  admirable  instinct  and  intuitive  sense 
of  right  with  which  you  have  kept  down  the  part 

1  King  Erik  [1876]. 
233 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

of  Grimur  beneath  any  danger  of  interference  with 
the  interest  which  should  be  (as  it  is  without  break 
or  flaw)  concentrated  on  the  figure  of  the  King. 
Erik's  two  public  speeches — the  latter  more  espe- 
cially, as  king,  delivered  under  more  tragic  cir- 
cumstances— seem  to  me  models  of  poetic  oratory, 
just  enough  and  not  too  much  raised  above  mere 
rhetorical  eloquence.  Once  or  twice  the  terse  keen 
clearness,  the  point  and  weight  of  a  line  or  phrase, 
reminded  me  not  unworthily  of  Landor:  and  you 
know  how  much  in  my  case  that  implies.  I  should 
like  to  know  what  Browning  thinks  of  your  book. 
I  was  much  interested  by  the  extracts  you  sent 
me  from  Newman's  letter,  *  which  you  once  men- 

1The  reference  is  to  a  letter  from  Cardinal  Newman,  still 
unpublished,  dated  December  i,  1873,  in  which  the  following 
passage  occurs : — 

I  am  likely  to  use  strong  words  for  two  reasons,  because 
I  do'  not  know  familiarly  the  poets  of  this  day,  and  because  I 
do  know  those  of  my  own  youth.  Those  poets  were  accus- 
tomed to  write  in  a  style  which,  so  far  from  hurting,  would 
benefit  their  readers;  as,  for  instance,  Scott,  Wordsfworth, 
Southey,  Crabbe,  Campbell — nay,  I  will  add  Byron  and  Moore, 
for  though  they  both  wrote  immoral  works,  yet  it  was  definite 
volumes  which  incurred  that  disgrace,  and  one  might  put  them 
aside,  yet  read  with  interest  and  pleasure,  other  works  of  those 
authors,  as  Childe  Harold,  and  (as  far  as  I  recollect)  Lalla 
Rookh.  (There  are  one  or  two  sceptical  stanzas  in  Childe  Har- 
old, but  they  are  accidental.)  As  far  as  I  can  make  out  from 
reviews,  etc.,  the  case  is  quite  different  as  regards  Swinburne  and 
Rosetti  [«'c]  ;  their  poems  are  soaked  in  an  ethical  quality, 
whatever  it  is  to  be  called,  which  would  have  made  it  im- 
possible in  the  last  generation  for  a  brother  to  read  them  to  a 
sister.  .  .  .  Protestants  do  not  understand,  as  Catholics  do, 

234 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

tioned  to  me  before:  and  amused  beyond  measure 
at  a  Catholic  leader  finding  "amorousness"  and 
"religion  such  irreconcilable  elements."  (Well, 
at  any  rate,  /  can  hardly  be  accused  of  trying  to 
reconcile  Venus  and  Mary,  or  Jesus  and  Priapus.) 
But  has  he  never  heard  of  the  last  goddess  of  his 
Church,  Marie  Alacoque,  the  type  and  incarnation 
of  furor  uterinus?  It  may  be  convenient;  but  it  is 
at  least  cool,  for  a  priest  of  that  faith  to  forget  that 
his  Church  has  always  naturally  and  necessarily 
been  the  nursing  mother  of  "pale  religious  lech- 
ery" (as  Blake  with  such  grand  scorn  labels  the 
special  quality  of  celibate  sanctity  "that  wishes  but 
acts  not"),  of  holy  priapism  and  virginal  nympho- 
mania.  Not  to  speak  of  the  filthy  visions  of  the 
rampant  and  rabid  nun  who  founded  "the  worship 
of  the  Sacred  Heart"  (she  called  it  heart;  in  the 
phallic  processions  they  called  it  by  a  more  and 
less  proper  name),  he  might  have  found  passages 
from  St.  Theresa  which  certainly  justify  from  a 
carnal  point  of  view  her  surname  of  the  Christian 
Sappho.  There  is  as  much  detail,  if  I  mistake  not 
(judging  by  extracts),  in  her  invocation  of  her 
Phaon — Jesus  Christ — as  in  the  Ode  to  Anactoria 
itself — which,  as  Byron  justly  observes,  is  not  "a 


that  not  only  grave  sins  of  impurity,  but  that  everything  which 
savours  of  or  tends  towards  impurity  is  wrong  too. 

235 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

^ 

good  example."  As  for  my  poor  paraphrase,  it 
(with  Dolores  and  the  rest)  is  too  mild  and  maid- 
enly for  mention  in  the  same  year. 

I  read  your  article  on  Erechtheus  with  pleasure 
but  cannot  judge  of  your  comparison  of  the  plot 
with  that  of  Euripides,  as  I  know  only  one  of  the 
fragments — or  "droppings" — of  his  play. 
Ever  affectionately  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXIII 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

February  istt  1876. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  have  just  finished  a  poem1  which  I 
should  like  to  see  in  the  Fortnightly,  but  it  is  "of 
first  necessity"  to  trouble  you  and  myself  with  the 
base  consideration  of  the  question  of  finance;  so  I 
plunge  at  once  into  that  miry  subject,  to  be  done 

1  "The  Last  Oracle,  A.D.  361."  The  poem  did  not  appear  in 
The  Fortnightly  Review,  but  was  published  in  Poems  and  Bal- 
lads, Second  Series,  1878. 

236 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

with  it  the  quicker.  You  see  when  I  send  a  little 
thing,  sonnet  or  song  of  but  a  dozen  lines,  else- 
where, I  never  get  less  than  £10  down,  reserving 
any  profits  by  music  or  such  like  that  may  accrue, 
and  though  of  course  I  don't  (I  wish  I  could!) 
expect  to  have  my  work  paid  for  according  to  that 
tariff  on  a  regularly  ascending  scale  still  I  have  to 
expect  more,  in  some  reasonable  proportion,  for  a 
poem  nine  or  ten  times  the  length  of  such  a  piece, 
as  the  present  poem  is.  I  hope  you  know  that  I 
don't  make  more  of  a  trade  of  my  work  than  I 
can  help;  only  the  other  day  I  sent  a  thing  by 
preference  to  a  paper  to  which  I  wished  well 
which  could  only  afford  to  give  a  quarter  exactly 
of  the  sum  offered  for  a  like  amount  of  work  by 
another  paper  just  before,  which  offer  was  not  ac- 
cepted— not  out  of  any  objection,  I  ought  to  say, 
to  the  latter  equally  respectable  but  not  equally 
"advanced"  and  consequently  richer  journal.  Still, 
as  we  know  on  higher  than  mere  human  authority, 
the  labourer  is  worthy  of  his  hire;  and  it  seems 
to  me  simpler  and  more  straightforward  to  lay 
the  question  before  you  at  once  and  so  leave  it; 
under  which  circumstances  I  shall  of  course  not  be 
hurt,  disappointed,  or  offended,  if  you  find  it  bet- 
ter to  decline  dealing  at  my  shop  on  the  average 
terms  of  the  market. 

So  much  for  the  Grub  Street  side  of  the  mat- 
ter; and  I  will  not  press  my  wares  by  any  further 

237 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

advertisement  than  a  mention  of  the  subject,  which 
starts  from  the  message  sent  back  (to  the  effect 
that  there  was  none)  from  Delphi  to  Julian  when 
he  sent  to  consult  the  oracle  the  year  of  his  acces- 
sion, and  passes  into  an  invocation  of  the  healing 
and  destroying  God  of  song  and  of  the  sun,  taken 
as  the  type  of  the  "light  of  thought"  and  spirit  of 
speech  which  makes  and  unmakes  gods  within  the 
soul  that  it  makes  vocal  and  articulate  from  age 
to  age;  not  really  therefore  son  of  Zeus  the  son  of 
Chronos,  but  older  than  all  time  we  can  take  count 
of,  and  father  of  all  possible  gods  fashioned  by  the 
human  spirit  out  of  itself  for  types  of  worship. 

This  sounds  rather  metaphysical,  but  I  don't 
think  the  verse  is  obscure  or  turbid — the  form  of 
a  hymn  or  choral  chant,  and  the  alternate  metre  of 
twelve  long  trochaic  lines  and  twelve  shorter  ana- 
paestic, carry  the  thought  on  and  carry  off  the  sym- 
bolic or  allegoric  ambiguity;  at  least  so  I  flatter 
myself.  But  I  must  not  be  recommending  this 
superior  article  now  in  stock  by  putting  my  own 
price  on  it  in  the  style  of  the  poets  of  The  Dunciad. 
I  need  hardly  warn  you  that  it  is  not  exactly  quali- 
fied by  its  tone  to  conciliate  a  Christian  public ;  tho' 
I  have  somewhat  softened  the  anti-Galilean  fer- 
vour of  my  first  conceptions. 

Have  you  seen  the  new  edition  of  my  old  friend 
Phraxanor?  *  I  am  anxious  she  should  have  more 

1  Joseph  and  his  Brethren,  1876. 
238 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

success  with  the  public  than  with  Joseph  of  old, 
and  that  her  old  poet  should  have  a  parting  round 
of  long  deferred  applause  to  cheer  his  own  exit 
from  the  stage — for  a  man  of  his  age  must  be  con- 
sidered as  having  got  into  his  fifth  act. 

I  have  just  been  reading  Meredith's  book1 
which  I  only  tried  by  fits  and  starts  as  it  was  com- 
ing out  in  the  Fortnightly.  Full  of  power  and 
beauty  and  fine  truthfulness  as  it  is,  what  a  noble 
book  it  might  and  should  have  been,  if  he  would 
but  have  foregone  his  lust  of  epigram  and  habit 
of  trying  to  tell  a  story  by  means  of  riddles  that 
hardly  excite  the  curiosity  they  are  certain  to  baf- 
fle! By  dint  of  revulsion  from  Trollope  on  this 
hand  and  Braddon  on  that,  he  seems  to  have  per- 
suaded himself  that  limpidity  of  style  must  mean 
shallowness,  lucidity  of  narrative  must  imply  trivi- 
ality, and  simplicity  of  direct  interest  or  positive 
incident  must  involve  "sensationalism."  It  is  a 
constant  irritation  to  see  a  man  of  such  rarely 
strong  and  subtle  genius,  such  various  and  splendid 
forces  of  mind,  do  so  much  to  justify  the  general 
neglect  he  provokes.  But  what  noble  powers  there 
are  visible  in  almost  all  parts  of  his  work.  I  hear 
he  has  written  a  very  fine  poem  on  the  death  of 
Attila. 

Have  you  seen  a  new  magazine  started  in  Paris 
— La  Republique  des  Lettres?  I,  as  a  French  poet 

1  Beauchamp's  Career. 
239 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

of  the  day,  have  been  solicited  to  help  in  setting 
it  on  foot,  together  with  Leconte  de  Lisle  (do  you 
know  his  works?  I  have  but  lately  begun  to  read 
them,  often  with  the  highest  admiration  and  en- 
joyment) ,  Flaubert  and  younger  men  of  note.  The 
editor  is  Catulle  Mendes,  Th.  Gautier's  son-in-law. 
I  have  just  had  an  ecstatic  letter  acknowledging  a 
poem  I  sent — an  attempt  to  adapt  to  French  verse 
the  complex  metre  of  an  Italian  sestina. 

I  hope  this  long  letter  will  not  find  you  over- 
whelmed with  graver  work  and  disposed  to  re- 
ceive it  with  an  execration ;  but  in  any  case  I  am, 
Yours  very  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — Can  you  tell  me  whether  the  text  of  that 
glorious  little  black  masterpiece  the  Neveu  de 
Rameau,  published  last  year  (1875)  by  Jouaust 
(Libraires  des  Bibliophiles)  is  trustworthy,  and  as 
correct  as  it  is  pretty?  And  have  you  detected  (not 
in  that  quarter)  Browning's  wholesale  plagiarism 
from  Diderot  of  a  plot  which  he  has  completely 
spoilt? 


240 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CXIV 
To  STEPHANE  MALLARME 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

5  Fewier,  1876. 

CHER  MONSIEUR,  ET  TROP  GENEREUX  CONFRERE, 
Je  prends  pour  vous  repondre  le  revers 
d'une  feuille  qui  vient  de  me  servir  pour  y  grif- 
fonner  une  traduction  de  la  fameuse  ballade-epi- 
taphe  de  Villon  "pour  luy  et  ses  compaignons"  que 
j'ai  essaye  de  mettre  en  vers  anglais  je  ne  sais  com- 
bien  de  fois  depuis  le  jour  ou  je  suis  sorti  de  col- 
lege, c'est  a  dire  depuis  bientot  seize  ans;  enfin  je 
crois  y  avoir  reussi  tout  d'un  trait,  en  conservant 
1'ordre  des  rimes;  seulement  j'ai  cru  pouvoir  me 
permettre  de  changer — peut-etre  de  defigurer — ce 
vers: 

"Plus  becquetez  d'oyseaulx,  que  dez  a  couldre" — 

ce  qui  me  parait  intraduisible,  a  moins  de  faire  une 
faute  plus  grave  encore  que  cette  infidelite,  c'est 
a  dire  d'attribuer  a  ce  grand  maitre  un  vers  faible 
ou  dur.  Que  Villon  me  pardonne!  et  je  crois 
qu'il  le  doit,  puisque  j'ai  beaucoup  travaille  a  la 
reproduction  de  plusieurs  de  ses  meilleures  pieces. 
Mais  en  ce  pays  vertueux  il  n'est  point  encore  per- 
mis  de  faire  imprimer  les  louanges  de  la  belle 

241 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

Heaulmiere  et  de  la  grosse  Margot.  Rossetti  et 
moi  nous  avions  autrefois  Tidee  de  traduire  en  en- 
tier  1'ceuvre  de  ce  grand  poete,  qui  complete  selon 
moi  la  trinite  poetique  du  moyen  age  ou  se  trouvent 
representees  trois  nations  et  trois  couches  sociales. 
Dante,  type  de  1'Italie  et  de  1'aristocratie;  Chaucer, 
type  de  1'Angleterre  et  de  la  haute  bourgeoisie; 
Villon,  type  de  la  France  et  du  peuple,  que  je 
mets  apres  Dante  et  (malgre  toute  mon  admiration 
pour  ce  grand  conteur  humoristique  et  chevaler- 
esque)  avant  Chaucer.  Vous  devez  sans  doute  con- 
naitre  les  trois  admirables  traductions  de  Rossetti, 
a  cette  epoque  mon  frere  aine  en  poesie,  qui  a  mis 
en  anglais  la  ballade  a  la  Vierge,  celle  des  "neiges 
d'antan"  et  le  rondeau  sur  la  Mort. 

Je  ne  saurais  vraiment  vous  dire,  cher  Monsieur, 
combien  je  suis  ravi  que  ma  Sextine  ait  trouve 
chez  vous  un  si  favorable  accueil.  Vous  avez  sans 
doute  raison  de  preferer 

"Pour  y  cueillir  rien  qu'un  souffle  d'amour" 

a  la  lecture  originale  qui  entraine  un  tel  concours 
de  r — "la  lettre  des  chiens,"  comme  dit  la  nour- 
rice  de  Juliette  a  Romeo.  Sans  cela,  je  crois  que 
j'aurais  prefere  a  cet  endroit  le  mot  "recueillir" 
au  mot  "cueillir"  puisque  "cueillir"  un  souffle 
comme  si  c'etait  une  fleur  ou  quelque  chose  de 
pareil  me  parait  une  phrase  plus  hasardee  et  peut- 
etre  moins  propre  que  celle  de  recueillir,  de  ramas- 

242 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

ser  et  d'emporter  le  souffle  fugitif  de  1'haleine  de 
la  mer,  pris  dans  les  ailes  ou  la  robe  trainante  de  la 
Nuit.  Mais  je  dois  vous  demander  pardon  d'avoir 
exprime  im  avis  quelconque  a  ce  sujet,  puisqu' 
apres  tout  cette  langue  si  cherie  n'est  pas  ma  langue 
natale.  Cependant  je  ne  comprends  plus  par  quel 
hasard  j'ai  pu  ecrire  ce  malheureux  mot  orme  au 
vers  sixieme  de  la  cinquieme  stance;  il  y  avait 
d'abord  ce  vers  que  j'ai  rejete,  je  ne  sais  plus  pour- 
quoi: 

"Ou  s'est  pose  le  pied  nu  de  1'amour." 

On  pourrait  lire  aussi: 

"La  trace  en  feu  du  pied  nu  de  1'amour," 

ou  bien : 

"Les  pas  perdus  (ou  sanglants)   du  fugitif  amour." 

Je  crois,  si  cela  ne  vous  deplaisait  point,  que  je 
prefererais  cette  derniere  variante.  II  me  semble 
maintenant  qu'en  transcrivant  cette  stance  j'ai  du 
songer  sans  y  prendre  garde,  au  mot  italien  orma, 
et  qu'egare  par  le  son  des  mots  j'ai  ccrit  par 
etourderie  orme  au  lieu  de  trace.  Evidemment  ce 
mot  malencontreux  s'est  trouve  par  megarde  sous 
ma  plume  et  je  ne  m'etonne  point  qu'il  vous  ait 
donne  de  la  peine. 

Le  lendemain  du  jour  ou  je  vous  ai  ecrit  j'ai  rec.u 
le  premier  numero  de  la  Republique  des  Lettres 

243 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

que  j'ai  lu  avec  beaucoup  d'interet  et  de  plaisir. 
J'ai  etc  surtout  frappe  de  votre  belle  et  sombre 
idee  du  phenomene  futur  et  des  vers  exquis  que 
vous  a  dedies  M.  Leon  Dierx,  qui  m'ont  rappele 
une  esquisse  merveilleuse  de  Leonardo  da  Vinci 
que  j'ai  vue  autrefois  a  Florence.  J'attends  avec 
une  reconnaissance  impatiente  la  lecture  de  votre 
"paraphe"  a  propos  de  monErectheus,  poeme  assez 
bien  accueilli  en  Angleterre,  et  que  je  crois  un  de 
mes  meilleurs. 

On  m'a  transmis  d'Amerique  il  y  a  quelques 
jours  un  bout  de  journal  ou  se  trouvait  imprimee 
ma  lettre  sur  Poe.  Je  suis  heureux  que  le  petit 
mot  que  j'ai  pu  dire  en  passant  sur  votre  oeuvre  ad- 
mirable vous  ait  plu,  a  vous  et  a  M.  Manet, 
a  qui  je  vous  prie  de  faire  parvenir  1'expression  de 
mon  sentiment.  Vous  devez  tous  les  deux  recevoir 
bientot — je  le  crains,  du  moins — une  photographic 
a  faire  dresser  les  cheveux  du  monument  qu'on 
vient  d'infliger  a  ce  pauvre  mort,  monument  d'une 
laideur  impossible  et  transatlantique. 

Au  revoir,  cher  Monsieur,  et  mille  remercie- 
ments  de  votre  lettre  charmente. 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE. 

Excusez  ce  mauvais  bout  de  feuille  et  ce  grif- 
fonnage  tout  barbouille  de  ratures;  je  vous  ecris  en 
ami,  c'est  a  dire  a  la  hate  et  librement. 

A.  C.  S. 
244 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

J'allais  oublier  de  vous  demander  un  conseil  sur 
le  premier  vers  de  la  quatrieme  stance  (a  propos, 
je  ne  tiens  pas  du  tout  a  la  conservation  des  chiffres, 
dont  vous  avez  bien  voulu  vous  occuper)  de  ma 
sextine.  J'avais  ecrit  d'abord: 

"Sous  le  soleil  qui  n'a  pas  de  sejour 
S'abrite  et  dort  sous  ton  aile  profonde," 

ce  qui  me  parait  valoir  mieux  que  la  variante: 

"La  misere  humble  et  lasse,  sans  sejour,"  etc., 

mais  on  y  avait  trouve  quelque  chose  comme  un 
quiproquo,  quoique  pour  moi  je  ne  vois x  rien 
d'equivoque  a  cette  phrase,  que  je  serais  bien  aise 
de  retablir  au  texte  si  vous  ne  la  trouvez  point  in- 
admissible. Pardon  de  cette  nouvelle  peine  que 
j'inflige  a  votre  bienveillance,  mais  vous  com- 
prenez  bien  que  je  tiens  a  paraitre  devant  le  public 
frangais  ajuste  de  mon  mieux. 

J'a  commence  un  petit  travail  que  je  me  propose 
d'offrir  a  la  Republique  des  Lettres,  sur  le  grand 
peintre-poete,  William  Blake,  que  je  crois  a  peu 
pres  inconnu  en  France.  J'ai  public  sur  lui  il  y  a 
sept  ans  une  assez  longue  etude  et  j'ai  cru  pouvoir 
donner  un  abrege  de  sa  vie,  avec  quelques  extraits 

1  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  word  should  read  "voie," 
and  it  is  true  that  the  "quoique"  is  usually  followed  by  a  sub- 
junctive. But  it  does  not  seem  certain  that  Swinburne  did  not 
prefer  to  use  the  indicative  here,  and  in  any  case  his  orthography 
must  be  respected. 

245 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

de  ses  poesies  qui  peut-etre  ne  seraient  pas  sans  in- 
teret  pour  les  poetes  frangais.  Mais  depuis  que 
nous  avons  perdu  Baudelaire  il  n'y  a  que  vous  qui 
pourriez  dignement  entreprendre  cette  tache  glori- 
euse  dont  j'ose  a  peine  me  charger,  mais  dont  je 
compte  avant  peu  vous  envoyer  quelques  echantil- 
lons. 


LETTER  CXV 
To  STEPHANE  MALLARME" 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thameg. 
14  Fevrier,  1876. 

CHER  MONSIEUR, 

Un  mot  de  remerciement  pour  vos  deux 
lettres,  celle  de  Vendredi  et  celle  d'hier.  Je  suis 
heureux  que  la  derniere  variant  vous  ait  plu.  Sans 
attendre  votre  reponse,  j'avais  deja  pris  sur  moi  de 
substituer  dans  1'epreuve  cette  legon  a  la  prece- 
dente.  J'ai  aussi  adresse  un  mot  a  M.  Mendes 
pour  indiquer  ou  pour  expliquer  les  changements 
faits  selon  votre  conseil  aussi  bien  que  ceux  que 
je  lui  soumettais  en  renvoyant  1'epreuve.  II  va  sans 
dire  qu'en  recevant  votre  premiere  lettre,  qui  est 
heureusement  arrivee  a  1'instant  meme  ou  j'allais 
depecher  cette  epreuve,  je  me  suis  empresse  de 

246 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

suivre  vos  conseils  et  sur  le  mot  cueilllr  et  sur  le 
pied  de  I'amour.    Sans  vous  c'est  le  poeme  qui  ce 
trouverait  boiteux  de  ce  pied-la. 
Je  ne  sais  si  vous  preferez  ou  non  le  vers 

"Sous  le  soleil,"  etc., 

mais  je  m'en  suis  rapporte  au  judgement  de  M. 
Mendes. 

Merci  encore  une  fois  de  vos  bons  conseils  et 
de  la  peine  que  vous  avez  bien  voulu  vous  donner 
a  mon  egard  au  moment  meme  ou  vous  etiez  pre- 
occupe  d'affaires  personnelles  d'une  bien  plus 
grand  importance.  Je  suis  ravi  d'entendre  que 
vous  devez  nous  donner  un  drame.1  Moi-meme 
en  ce  moment  je  travaille  a  poser  pour  ainsi  dire 
les  fondements  de  1'oeuvre  qui  doit  completer  ma 
trilogie  de  Marie  Stuart.  Pas  une  scene  de  cette 
troisieme  et  dernfere  partie  n'est  encore  ecrite, 
mais  je  m'occupe  deja  d'en  etablir  les  trues  et  d'en 
lier  1'action  tragique.  J'attendrai  avec  impatience 
des  nouvelles  de  votre  drame.  A  propos,  il  fau- 
drait  mettre  sur  1'adresse  des  lettres  le  nom  de 
la  ville  de  ce  canton,  Henley-on-Thames,  apres 
et  non  avant  celui  de  la  maison  de  campagne, 
Holmivood,  sans  quoi  les  courriers  pourront  se 

1  Mallarme,  who  had  no  genius  for  play-writing,  was  always 
dreaming  of  an  ideal  theatre.  Perhaps  what  is  referred  to  here 
is  Herodiade,  the  fragment  of  which,  in  dialogue,  was  at  this 
time  much  occupying  his  thoughts. 

247 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

tromper  et  les  lettres  s'egarer.  Pardon  de  ce 
detail;  je  crois  que  votre  lettre  de  Vendredi  a 
du  etre  retardee  par  cet  accident  ou  bien  par  la 
betise  des  courriers. 

Tout  a  vous, 
ALGERNON  CH.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXVI 
To  JOHN  CHURTON  COLLINS 

Holmwood, 

March  2^th,  [1876]. 

MY  DEAR  COLLINS, 

Your  letter  gave  me  great  pleasure  and 
a  sense  of  something,  in  the  rather  dull  monotonous 
puppet-show  of  my  life,  which  often  strikes  me  as 
too  barren  of  action  or  enjoyment  to  be  much  worth 
holding  on  to,  better  than  nothingness,  or  at  least 
seeming  better  for  a  minute.  As  I  don't  myself 
know  any  pleasure  physical  or  spiritual  (except 
what  comes  of  the  sea)  comparable  to  that  which 
comes  of  verse  in  its  higher  moods,  I  am  certainly 
glad  to  know  that  I  can  give  this  to  others  as  others 
again  have  given  it  to  me.  Your  letter  in  its  full- 
ness of  generous  enthusiasm  makes  me  look  over  my 
battle  chorus  *  again  and  I  confess  I  am  content 

1  In  Erechtheus. 
248 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

with  it.  But  it  is  odd  how  a  book  once  published 
goes  out  of  my  head — drops  as  it  were  out  of  one's 
life  or  thought,  not  to  be  taken  up  again  for  many 
days.  Till  it  is  in  print,  it  is  still  part  of  oneself, 
and  concerns  one's  thoughts,  and  one  takes  a  per- 
sonal interest  in  it  which  vanishes  on  publication; 
so  at  least  I  find.  E.g.  I  am  still  interested  about 
my  Delphic  poem  which  I  should  like  to  read  to 
you,  as  I  should  also  like  to  run  up  as  you  propose, 
whether  to  throw  myself  on  your  hospitality  or  not. 
But  I  want  to  get  a  little  work  done  this  spring, 
and  London  living  disagrees  with  my  work.  Watts 
has  got  my  poem  on  a  dead  garden  1 — I  believe  it 
is  booked  for  The  Athen&um.  On  Saturday  you 
will  see  a  Report 2  of  mine  in  The  Examiner,  which 
I  hope  may  waken  some  echo  in  the  Press,  and  do 
some  service  to  the  cause  of  Shakespeare  by  brush- 
ing off  his  pedestal  the  most  pestilent  swarm  of  par- 
asites that  ever  settled  there.  Did  you  see  The 
Academy  letter  (Jan.  29th)  in  which  the  head  of 
the  crew  exhorted  me  "to  try  and  learn"  of  him, 
"educate  my  ears  and  eyes"  to  the  understanding 
of  metre,  poetic  style,  English  rhythm,  and  the  text 
of  Shakespeare! 

1  am  very  glad  to  hear  of  the  great  Cyril  com- 

1 A  Forsaken  Garden,  printed  in  The  Atheneeum  for  July 
22nd,  1876,  p.  112. 

2  Report  of  the  First  Anniversary  Meeting  of  the  Newest 
Shakespeare  Society,  April  I,  1876. 

249 


ing  on.  Mr.  Grosart  in  his  correspondence  asks 
after  it  persistently.  Do  take  the  opportunity  of 
giving  a  stripe — or  many  stripes — to  the  damnable 
incompetence  and  impudence  with  which  the  new 
editor  of  Dodsley  (W.  C.  Hazlitt)  has  mangled 
and  defaced  beyond  recognition  in  many  of  its  finest 
passages  the  text  of  The  Revenger's  Tragedy.  The 
sight  of  it  put  me  into  such  a  rage  ten  days  ago  that 
I  wanted  to  write  to  you  on  the  subject  on  the  spot, 
but  knew  not  where  to  have  you.  Is  the  present 
address  "perdurably"  safe? 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


'LETTER  CXVII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Holmwood. 
March  2gth,  [1876]. 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  have  written  to  the  Hon.  Sec.  of  the 
Byron  Committee  that  I  should  not  be  in  town  on 
the  next  day  of  meeting.  Even  if  I  were,  I  should 
not  be  much  disposed  to  attend,  as  though  I  grudge 
neither  my  name  nor  my  subscription,  I  did  not 

250 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

join  the  movement  till  Mr.  Trelawny's  nomination 
of  me  made  it  (of  course)  impossible  for  me  to 
decline;  tho'  I  certainly  do  not  expect  anything 
very  creditable  to  result  from  the  consignment  of 
Byron's  memory  and  memorial  to  the  tender  mer- 
cies of  the  British  image-maker,  and  the  patronage 
of  the  illustrious  author  of  the  Revolutionary  Epic 
— who  might  I  think  be  content  with  unmaking  a 
queen  in  the  process  of  making  an  empress,  and 
leave  us  others  alone  dead  or  alive.  However,  his 
last  move  is  all  in  our  favour,  such  of  us  as  are 
good  republicans. 

Have  you  seen  a  magazine  conducted  by  A. 
V[acquerie],  and  other  French  poets, — La  Repub- 
lique  des  Lettres?  It  is  the  second  time  I  have  been 
solicited  to  let  myself  be  enrolled  as  contributor  to 
a  Paris  periodical,  and  this  time  I  have  consented  so 
far  as  to  give  them  a  poem  for  the  third  number, 
which  has  been  acclaimed  as  the  best  of  its  kind 
in  the  language,  and  a  half  promise  of  scribbling 
more  in  prose  and  verse.  The  Lamb  was  sent  for 
from  London,  and  came  safe.  I  was  rather  amazed 
yesterday  on  seeing  the  direction  of  an  American 
journal  forwarded  through  your  hands,  as  your 
note  just  received  explains.  ...  I  am  sorry  to  see 
poor  old  Whitman  seems  to  be  in  such  a  bad  way 
as  to  health  and  means  (also,  if  one  may  judge  by 
extracts,  to  be  writing  such  damned  and  damnable 
rubbish!).  I  hoped  one  might  infer  the  contrary 

251 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

from  the  pleasant  little  word  you  sent  me  concern- 
ing him  in  a  former  letter.  I  hope  (though  The 
Saturday  Review  and  Daily  News  be  unpropi- 
tious)  that  something  may  come  of  the  movement 
here  in  his  favour.  If  you  look  into  this  week's 
Examiner  you  will  see  an  attempt  on  my  part  to 
do  something  towards  brushing  away  the  most 
pestilent  swarm  of  parasites  that  ever  yet  settled 
on  the  name  and  the  text  of  Shakespeare.1 
I  am  ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXVIII 

To  STEPHANE  MALLARME 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 

I  Juin  [1876]. 

CHER  MONSIEUR, 

Merci  mille  fois  de  votre  merveilleux 
petit  joyau  de  poesie  2  si  dignement  et  si  delicate- 
ment  enchasse  comme  un  diamant  dans  un  ecrin 

1  Report  of  the  First  Anniversary   of  the  Newest  Society, 
printed   in   The  Examiner,   April    i,    1876.      Reprinted   in  A 
Study  of  Shakespeare,  1880,  pp.  276-300. 

2  No  doubt  the  first  edition  of  L'Apres-Midi  d'un  Faune, 
1876. 

252 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

de  perles.  Vous  etes  bien  heureux  d'avoir  a  Paris 
des  editeurs  ou  des  bijoutiers  capables  de  ce  travail 
exquis  et  parfait  Une  chose  si  belle  de  toutes  parts 
doit  bien  faire  crier  les  imbeciles  plus  haut  encore 
qu'ils  ne  hurlent  a  Londres  centre  le  "poe'me  pa'ien 
et  degoutant"  du  Last  Oracle.  J'ai  rec.u  le  votre 
il  y  a  deux  jours  seulement  au  retour  d'un  voyage 
a  Guernsey  (1'ile  veuve)  et  a  Sark,  qui  depasse 
meme  les  eloges  d'Auguste  Vacquerie.  Moi,  nour- 
ri  aux  bords  de  la  mer,  je  n'ai  j'amais  rien  vu  de  si 
charmant. 

Grace  aux  bons  soins  de  M.  Payne  votre  livre 
m'est  parvenu  sans  tache  ni  froissement.  Je  suis  a 
present  tres  occupe,  mais  j'espere  pouvoir  terminer 
(je  ne  sais  pas  quand)  mes  notes  sur  Blake,  dont 
on  s'occupe  fort  ici  en  ce  moment.  Une  societe 
d'artistes  ou  d'amateurs  vient  de  donner  une  expo- 
sition de  ses  ceuvres.1  II  s'y  trouve  quelque  nudites 
assez  innocentes,  quelquefois  un  peu  gauches;  aussi 
un  article  de  journal,  ecrit  a  ce  qu'on  pretend  par 
un  clergyman  et  dicte  par  sa  femme,  ne  manqua- 
t-il  pas  de  crier  a  1'indecence.  Depuis  ce  jour-la, 
comme  vous  pensez,  la  petite  salle  d'exposition  est 

1  This  was  the  very  important  exhibition  of  William  Blake's 
pictures  and  other  works,  opened  in  the  Burlington  Club 
(17,  Savile  Row)  in  March,  1876,  and  kept  open  for  three  or 
four  months.  This  "extraordinary  and  splendid  spectacle," 
as  Rossetti  called  it,  produced  a  deep  sensation  in  English  art 
circles. 

253 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

tellement  encombree  de  femmes  et  surtout  de 
jeunes  filles  accompagnees  de  leurs  peres,  etc.,  que 
Ton  ne  voit  presque  les  tableaux  mystique  qui 
m'ont  paru  derouter  tant  soit  peu  1'attente  et  meme 
1'intelligence  de  ces  dames. 

Mille  amities, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXIX 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
October  ijth,  [1876]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

I  am  very  much  obliged  by  your  kind 
offer  of  a  relic  *  which  I  shall  value  very  much 
on  all  accounts.  I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  that  Mrs. 
Gosse  has  been  so  ill.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  bad 
season  for  health.  I  have  been  very  ill  myself  for 
some  time.  (I  don't  know  whether  you  heard  from 
any  quarter  of  my  being  accidentally  poisoned  some 
months  since  by  the  perfume  of  Indian  lilies  in  a 

1  An  unpublished  copy  of  verses  by  W.  S.  Landor,  in  his  own 
handwriting. 

254 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

close  bed-room — which  sounds  romantic,  but  was 
horrible  in  experience,  and  I  have  not  yet  wholly 
recovered  the  results,  or  regained  my  strength.) 

I  have  not  yet  seen  a  copy  of  Grosart's  Herrick 
—rather  to  my  surprise.  I  suppose  the  delay  lies 
at  Chatto's  door.  When  well  enough  to  write  I 
shall  review  his  Barnfield  in  the  Athenaum.1  I 
am  very  sorry  the  text  of  his  introduction  to  Her- 
rick is  so  full  of  misprints.  His  texts  usually  are 
very  accurate,  are  they  not? 

With  best  regards  and  renewed  thanks  to  you 
both, 

Believe  me, 

Ever  sincerely  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXX 

To  EDMUND  GOSSE 

Holmwood, 

October  2Qth,  [1876]. 

MY  DEAR  GOSSE, 

A  New  Trick  to  Cheat  the  Devil  (pub- 
lished 1639)  is  by  Robt.  Davenport,  author  of  The 

1  Swinburne  failed  to  carry  this  project  into  execution. 
255 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

City  Nightcap  and  King  John  and  Matilda.  I 
have  not  read  it,  but  I  remember  an  article  on  R. 
D.  in  the  Retrospective  Review  (ist  series)  praises 
it  briefly  but  warmly. 

I  need  not  say  that  Marzials  is  most  welcome 
to  publish  his  music  to  (and  with)  any  words  of 
mine.  What  are  his  four  chosen  pieces?  I  should 
like  to  see  and  hear  them. 

I  am  better,  but  hardly  strong  yet,  and  fear  my 
Encyclopaedic  article  on  Congreve,  just  accom- 
plished with  painful  labour,  will  prove  wretchedly 
inadequate. 

With  best  regards  to  you  both, 

Ever  sincerely  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

This  is  badly  enough  written  to  pass  for  an  auto- 
graph of  Shakespeare.  I  have  to  catch  the  early 
and  only  "Sabbath"  post. 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXI 
To  JOHN  CHURTON  COLLINS 

Holmwood, 

Hen  ley-o  n-T  homes. 

December  nth,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  COLLINS, 

Thank  you  sincerely  (ex  into  corde,  as 
my  master  Victor  Hugo  once  began  a  letter  to  me 
unworthy,  with  a  most  tremendous  dash  under  the 
words)  for  so  high  a  compliment  and  one  that  I 
shall  always  prize  so  highly  as  the  dedication  of 
Tourneur.  Nothing  could  have  given  me  more 
pleasure,  whether  on  private  grounds  as  your 
friend,  or  on  public  grounds  as  a  lover  and  student 
of  Cyril  Tourneur  and  all  his  kind  from  the  ripe 
age  of  twelve,  at  which  I  first  read  The  Revenger's 
Tragedy  in  my  tutor's  Dodsley  at  Eton  (which 
he  was  actually  kind  enough  to  entrust  to  such  a 
small  boy)  with  infinite  edification,  and  such  profit 
that  to  the  utter  neglect  of  my  school  work,  to  say 
nothing  of  my  duties  as  a  fag,  I  forthwith  wrote  a 
tragedy  of  which  I  have  utterly  forgotten  the  very 
name  (having  had  the  sense  at  sixteen  to  burn  it 
together  with  every  other  scrap  of  MS.  I  had  in 
the  world),  but  into  which  I  do  remember  that, 
with  ingenuity  worthy  of  a  better  cause,  I  had  con- 

257 


.      SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

trived  to  pack  twice  as  many  rapes  and  about  three 
times  as  many  murders  as  are  contained  in  the  mod- 
el, which  is  not  noticeably  or  exceptionally  defi- 
cient in  such  incidents.  It  must  have  been  a  sweet 
work,  and  full  of  the  tender  and  visionary  inno- 
cence of  childhood's  unsullied  fancy. 

I  am  sorry  my  good  friend  Mr.  Grosart's  anno- 
tations have  proved  on  revision  so  barren  of  good 
results — but,  of  course,  I  knew  he  was  much  more 
of  an  enthusiast  and  bookworm  than  a  critic.  But 
his  good  will  and  ardour  are  (as  Ruskin  would 
say)  very  precious  to  me. 

I  have  sent  (but  this  is  a  dead  secret,  which 
I  confided  as  yet  to  no  soul  alive)  a  ballad  of  Chiv- 
alry to  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  without  my  name — 
subject  "The  Quest  of  Sir  Bright  de  Brummagem" 
against  the  heathen  dogs  who  worship  Mahomet 
and  Termagaunt,  and  pollute  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
of  his  (Sir  B.'s)  Blessed  Lord.  I  wonder  if  they 
will  put  it  in! 1 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  The  Editor  of  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  did  not  "put  it  in." 
This  Ballad  of  Bulgarie  remained  in  manuscript  until  1893, 
when  it  was  privately  printed,  in  an  edition  of  twenty-five 
copies,  with  a  prefatory  note  by  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse. 


258 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXII 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-Thames. 
December  22nd,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

Many  thanks  for  the  excellent  photo- 
graph I  have  just  received  and  slipped  into  my 
copy  of  the  French  Raven?  according  to  your 
happy  suggestion.  I  shall  be  anxious  to  see  the 
Baltimore  volume.2  That  of  New  York  I  should 
also  for  other  reasons  be  curious  to  see,  on  account, 
namely,  of  the  very  blunders  you  mention. 

I  do  not  remember  either  my  own  remark  on 
"horrors  of  death,"  or  your  comment  on  it — cer- 
tainly nothing  whatever  on  your  part  can  I  remem- 
ber which  could  have  offended  one  by  any  note  of 
flippancy. 

I  have  only  seen  the  first  volume  of  Mr.  For- 
man's  Shelley,  which  was  sent  to  me  without  a 
word  of  explanation,  and  re-demanded  in  a  no 

1  The  Raven,   translated    into    French   by   Mallarme,    and 
illustrated  by  Manet. 

2  The  Edgar  Poe  Baltimore  Memorial  Volume,   1877,  for 
which  Tennyson,  Swinburne,  and  others,  wrote  letters  of  sym- 
pathy. 

259 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

less  inexplicable  fashion,  by  that  seemingly  rather 
singular  person  the  editor  of  The  Academy?  I 
was  equally  obliged  by  the  gift  and  interested  by 
the  perusal  of  your  article  on  "Politian." 

Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


Holm-wood, 

Henley -on-Thames, 
December  27th,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

On  receipt  of  your  letter  this  morning  I 
regret  to  say  our  mutual  friend  of  past  years,  Mrs. 
H.  Manners,  was  taken  with  strong  hysterics.  Her 
'owls,  like  those  of  the  late  Mr.  Harris  when  his 
first  was  shown  him  in  the  arms  of  Mrs.  Gamp, 
was  organs.  "If,"  she  said,  "if  poor  Horace  her 
lamented  lord  had  lived  to  see  this  day,  he  would 
have  been  a  proud  and  happy  man.  He/'  she 
said,  with  acrimonious  emphasis,  "always  believed 
in  my  genius  as  a  novelist,  the  others"  (too  evident- 
ly and  pointedly  alluding  to  my  unoffending  self) 

1  The  late  Dr.  Appleton. 
260 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

"never  did."  Nevertheless  our  fair  friend  wishes 
to  know  what,  if  anything,  she  would  under  the 
circumstances  get  for  her  immortal  work,  for  the 
mere  fame  which  might  accrue  to  her  from  its 
publication  I  have  her  own  authority  for  saying 
that  she  does  not  care  a  damn.  She  wishes  to 
know  the  name  and  something  more  of  the  nature 
and  style  of  the  proposed  magazine.  She  added 
some  allusions  to  editors  of  journals,  publishers, 
and  others,  couched  in  terms  more  familiar  to  the 
tongue  or  pen  of  Mr.  Gladstone  than  (I  am  happy 
to  say)  to  mine.  Suffice  it  to  say  the  adjectives  gen- 
erally had  some  reference  to  blood,  and  the  sub- 
stantives to  the  interesting  natives  of  the  suffering 
Christian  province  of  Bulgaria.  "No  B.B.,"  she 
was  pleased  to  assert  (not  I  believe  meaning  Bashi 
Bazouk)  "should  have  the  first  fruits  of  her  youth 
and  early  married  life,  except  for  Cash  paid  down 
on  the  Nail,  and  on  the  delivery  or  the  appearance 
of  each  division  of  the  work."  As  an  honest  wom- 
an she  cannot  think  at  her  age  of  giving  herself  for 
nothing  to  a  total  stranger,  even  tho'  introduced  by 
so  old  a  friend  as  yourself ;  nor,  as  a  moral  man,  can 
I  conscientiously  recommend  her  to  do  so.1 

1This  amusing  letter  refers  to  the  terms  suggested  for  the 
publication  of  A  Year's  Letters,  by  Mrs.  Horace  Manners.  The 
novel  duly  appeared  in  The  Tatler,  Vol.  2,  from  August  to 
December,  1877.  In  1905  it  was  republished  in  volume  form 
under  the  amended  title  Love's  Cross-Currents .  The  Tatler 
was  edited  by  Robert  Francillon. 

261 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

I  send  you  a  Ballad1  (anonymous)  which  was 
sent  some  three  weeks  since  to  the  Pall  Mall  Ga- 
zette, and  has  received  no  notice.  If  the  Globe, 
or  any  other  respectable  Anti-Russian  paper  that 
you  know  of,  would  care  to  publish  it  without 
the  author's  name,  I  am  at  liberty  to  say  it  is  at 
the  service  of  such  papers. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXXIV 
To  JOHN  H.  INGRAM 

Holmwood, 
Shiplake, 

Henley-on-  Thames. 
December  2%thf,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  SIR, 

A  thousand  thanks  for  the  Baltimore 
Memorial,  which  you  have  been  kind  enough  to 
accept  the  trouble  of  forwarding  to  me.  Too  much 
of  your  name  the  book  cannot  possibly  contain ;  for 
too  much  of  thanks  cannot  be  paid  by  Poe's  admir- 
ers to  the  first  adequate  and  thoroughly  serviceable 
champion  of  his  character  and  memory. 

Ever  yours  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  The  Ballad  of  Bulgarie. 
262 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXV 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

January   8/A,    [1877]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

You  hardly  make  such  allowance  as 
might  be  expected  from  a  chivalrous  gentleman  for 
the  weakness  of  sex,  and  the  naturally  tremulous 
susceptibilities  of  a  desolate  widow  who  has  to 
consider  at  once  the  credit  of  her  late  lord's  name 
and  the  prospects  of  her  orphan  child.  I  must 
await  at  least  the  reply  of  a  friend  whose  advice  in 
the  matter  I  have  asked  on  her  behalf;  but  as  soon 
as  ever  I  receive  his  opinion  I  will  let  you  know 
my  decision  without  a  day's  avoidable  delay. 

Ever  yours,. 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


263 


SWINBURNE  S    LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXVI 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

January  21th,  [1877], 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  hesitate  to  express  my  full  feeling 
about  the  book  (Mrs.  H.  M/s  Letters),  lest  the 
simplest  expression  would  seem  inflated.  To  me  it 
appears  an  almost  consummate  piece  of  art,  among 
English  analytical  novels  of  our  age  only  rivalled 
by  The  Scarlet  Letter.  The  surface  is  a  sparkling 
picture  of  a  phase  of  society  with  which  the  writer 
is  evidently  familiar.  But  how  many  will  detect 
the  darts  of  satire  in  every  page,  and  the  lurid  scorn 
that  runs  through  the  whole? — its  subtlety, 
humour,  and  intense  pathos  are  out  of  the  ken  of 
the  British  public — your  leading  characters  and 
plot,  which  seems  a  very  natural  one,  are  wholly 
original.  Lady  Midhurst  is  as  strikingly  English 
as  Madame  de  Merteuil  is  French.  The  boys  are 
both  good  fellows.  Clara  is  sui  generis — but  I 
shall  not  say  what  I  think  of  that  young  woman. 
As  for  the  Professor  I  only  hope  some  five  or  six 
readers  may  see  the  book  with  such  eyes  as  his. 

You  must  desire  the  printers  to  be  very  careful 
to  return  the  manuscript  without  erasing  the  pen- 
cilled notes  and  marks  in  green,  made  by  Nichol 

264 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

on  the  margins — as  I  particularly  want  to  keep 
them  for  my  own  reference.  Of  course  they  will 
not  be  stupid  enough  either  to  print  them  or  to 
rule  them  out.  The  same  caution  applies  to  the 
passages  crossed  out  or  otherwise  marked  for  omis- 
sion— but  on  no  account,  if  you  please,  to  be  de- 
stroyed or  obliterated.  And,  as  aforesaid,  the  MS., 
sheet  for  sheet,  must  accompany  each  proof. 

Hoping  to  hear  from  you  by  return  of  post,  I 
remain  with  all  good  wishes  for  your  undertaking 
and  yourself. 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

P.S. — Before  I  see  Mrs.  Horace  into  the  Lon- 
don express  I  must  ask  you  to  return  my  ballad 
of  Bulgaria,  which  I  want  for  my  own  immediate 
use  and  present  satisfaction — as  there  is  apparently 
no  place  for  it  in  London.  As  soon  as  you  have 
seen  it,  with  a  word  of  reply  to  this  note,  Mrs. 
H.  M.  (as  aforesaid)  will  have  the  honour,  etc. 

As  to  The  Ballad  of  Bulgarie,  if  truth  must  be 
told,  having  of  course  resigned  all  expectation  of 
seeing  it  in  London  type,  I  wanted  to  send  it  to 
Nichol  for  his  private  reading — and  as  I  have  not 
another  copy  of  course  I  want  the  only  one  extant 
returned  for  that  purpose.  I  am  delighted  to  hear 
that  Dilke  liked  it.  If  nothing  else  will  do,  I  must 
print  it  on  a  fly-sheet  in  the  old  black  letter  ballad 

265 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

fashion  by  way  of  appendix  to  my  Note  on  the 
Muscovite  Crusade.  I  wonder  if  this  could  really 
be  done  with  a  comic  head  and  tail  piece,  and 
whether  if  so  published  it  would  pay? 

I  can't  get  you  here  a  copy  of  Nichol's  Tables, * 
nor  spare  my  own,  but  no  doubt  you  can  easily  bor- 
row one ;  if  you  can  and  will  really  do  me  and  him 
a  good  turn  of  striking  a  stroke  in  their  defence. 
The  publisher  is  James  Maclehose,  61,  Vincent 
Street,  Glasgow,  publisher  to  the  University. 

A  propos — of  course  there  will  be  no  illustra- 
tions to  the  Letters.  I  don't  think  Mrs.  H.  M.'s 
life  or  reason  could  be  counted  on  to  withstand 
the  shock  of  seeing  her  text  adorned  by  the  de- 
vices of  the  comic  British  Artist.  Indeed,  between 
ourselves,  she  has  mentioned  to  me  in  confidence 
that  she  will  be  damned  if  she  stands  it;  and  indeed 
I  think  she  will  be. 

1  Tables  of  European  History,  Literature,  Science,  and  Art. 
A  fifth  edition  was  published  by  Dr.  W.  R.  Jack  in  1909. 


266 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


Holmwood, 

Henley-o  n-  Thames. 

Feb.  ind,  1877. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

Mrs.  H.  Manners  desires  me  to  say  that 
having  returned  from  a  business  excursion  from 
Scotland  with  renewed  health  and  greatly  forti- 
fied (thank  God!)  in  spirits,  she  will  do  herself 
the  honour  of  waiting  on  you  in  person  (that  is, 
not  in  the  flesh,  but  in  the  spirit — and  in  MS.)  at 
any  time  you  may  appoint. 

I  have  only  one  thing  in  the  way  of  business  to 
say,  and  that  seriously,  which  I  am  sure  you  will 
take  as  it  is  meant,  in  earnest,  and  without  offence. 
I  need  not  say  what,  on  sending  the  MS.  for  his 
revision,  the  oldest  friend  I  have  said  concerning 
your  proposal,  that  it  would  give  me1  real  pleasure 
if  I  could  by  joining  your  enterprise  thus  under  the 
rose  be  of  any  service  to  an  undertaking  presided 
over  by  a  friend  like  yourself,  to  whose  good  offices 
with  Karl  Blind  I  am  directly  indebted  for  the 
highest  honour  of  my  life  and  one  of  its  greatest 
and  purest  pleasures,  my  presentation  to  Mazzini. 
At  the  same  time,  it  implies  no  impeachment  to 

267 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

my  confidence  in  your  own  good  taste  and  sense  if  I 
say  as  between  ourselves  that  but  for  my  personal 
knowledge  of  you  I  should  certainly  hesitate — or 
rather,  to  be  quite  frank,  I  should  at  once  decline — 
to  be  concerned  in  any  way  with  anything  in  the 
nature  of  a  "satirical  journal"  especially  if  there 
was  any  breath  or  hint  in  the  matter  of  any  such 
connection  or  reference  as  you  mention,  in  earnest 
or  in  fun,  for  satirical  or  for  social  purposes,  with 
the  name  or  shadow  of  the  name  of  any  "scion  of 
royalty."  From  the  Tomahawk  down  to  the  Hor- 
net, I  understand  such  papers  of  late  years  have  al- 
ways sooner  or  later  gone  into  ways  on  which  I 
should  feel  it  impossible  for  a  gentleman  to  keep 
them  company  without  forfeiting  his  self-respect. 
As  my  friend  Watts  knows,  I  was  urgently  solicited 
to  send  some  (or  any)  contribution  to  Vanity  Fair 
and  name  (if  I  remember  right)  my  own  terms. 
I  never  did,  or  thought  of  doing  so;  and  was  very 
glad  I  had  not,  when  there  appeared  in  its  col- 
umns a  most  infamously  insolent  attack  on  one  of 
my  best  friends,  the  Master  of  Balliol.  Nothing 
I  then  felt  could  have  been  more  painful  or  in- 
jurious to  me  than  the  consciousness  of  ever  having 
had  the  very  slightest  connection  with  such  a  paper, 
however  popular  or  profitable  the  connection 
might  have  been ;  and  Watts  was  most  strongly  of 
the  same  mind.  I  should  think  it  must  be  very 
difficult  for  the  conductor  of  such  an  enterprise  to 

268 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

be  so  perfectly  sure  of  all  his  contributors,  or  to 
keep  so  close  and  constant  a  watch  on  them  as  to 
feel  absolutely  certain  that  nothing  unworthy  (in 
any  sense)  of  a  gentleman  can  ever  creep  or  slip 
into  his  columns. 

It  would  be  a  mere  impertinence  to  reassure  you 
of  my  confidence  in  yourself;  but  I  think  it  neces- 
sary to  say  this  much  before  signing  myself  in 
haste 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


Holmwood, 

Henley-vn-Thames, 

February  "jth,   [1877]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

I  would,  as  you  desire,  send  Mrs.  Hor- 
ace by  this  post,  but  my  regard  for  appearance  for- 
bids me  to  let  a  lady  with  whom  I  was  once  on 
terms  of  some  intimacy — need  I  add  that  such 
terms  were  purely  Platonic? — travel  by  rail  en 
deshabille.  In  other  words  I  must  finish  reading 
the  MS.  through  and  correcting  the  transcriber's 

269 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

errors,  cancelling  or  adding  a  word  or  two  when 
necessary,  etc.,  before  sending  it  on.  It  will  save 
time  in  the  long  run  not  to  leave  all  revision  and 
correction  to  the  last  minute.  In  a  day  or  two 
more  I  hope  to  finish  this  task,  and  will  then  direct 
the  parcel  to  the  new  address  you  give  me.  I  was 
sure  you  would  receive  my  last  note  in  the  same 
friendly  spirit  and  sense  as  I  wrote  it. 

As  to  the  poor  little  invalid  R  .H.1  I  hear  every- 
body I  know  who  knows  him,  among  them  the 
most  ferocious  and  thorough-going  young  repub- 
licans at  Oxford,  who  have  succeeded  to  my  place 
and  that  of  my  contemporary  revolutionists  there, 
speak  well  of  him  as  a  thoroughly  nice  boy,  modest 
and  simple  and  gentle,  devoted  to  books  and  poetry, 
without  pretence  or  affectation.  So  don't  you, 
being  yourself  a  gentleman,  be  a  party  in  any 
private  or  public  way  to  any  taking  of  his  poor 
little  innocent  name  in  vain,  which  would  be  a 
very  blackguardly  and  stupid  proceeding,  worthy 
only  of  Yates  and  Co. 

When  I  was  at  Oxford,  on  a  visit  to  the  Master 
of  Balliol,  Prince  Leopold  hearing  of  it  posted 
off  at  once  to  call  on  him,  for  the  chance  (as  after- 
wards came  out)  of  meeting  me.  But  the  Fates 
crossed  his  aspirations  for  I  was  out,  and  when 
I  returned  the  call — as  of  course  was  necessary, 

1  H.R.H.  Prince  Leopold,  Duke  of  Albany. 
270 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

in  Mr.  Jowett's  company — he  was  out.  Consider- 
ing what  the  boy  must  have  known  of  my  opinions, 
it  shewed  a  genuine  honest  youthful  interest  in 
Art  and  Letters  to  go  out  of  his  way  on  the  chance 
of  meeting  a  poet  who  has  as  little  claim  to  friend- 
ly advances  on  the  part  of  a  Prince  Royal,  as 
even  to  the  reversion  of  the  post  of  Poet  Laure- 
ate. 

Mind  when  I  send  Mrs.  H.  M.  you  acknowl- 
edge her  safe  arrival  by  return  of  post,  and  of 
course  the  MS.  must  always  accompany  the  proofs 
sent  to  me  in  due  progress. 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  CXXIX 
To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwoodj 

Henley-on-T  hornet. 

February  nth,  [1877]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

Mrs.  Horace  having  returned  from  her 
trip  and  been  carefully  revised — a  few  specks 
brushed  from  her  garments,  and  a  drop  or  two  of 
strengthening  medicine  administered  to  the  fair 

271 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

traveller — she  will  do  herself  the  distinguished 
honour  of  waiting  on  you  without  further  delay 
— awaiting  only  a  line  to  acknowledge  the  receipt 
of  this  note  and  also  of  my  last  in  re  H.R.H.,  etc., 
etc.  The  vanity  so  natural  and  pardonable  to  her 
sex  cannot  refrain  from  the  indulgence  of  sending 
you  by  my  hands  this  extract  from  the  remarks 
made  on  her  MS.  by  the  oldest  and  best  friend 
I  have  in  the  world,  Professor  Nichol  of  Glasgow 
(to  whose  Historic  Tables — a  great  monument  of 
general  research  and  the  scholarlike  faculties  of 
harmonising  order  and  masterly  composition,  most 
viciously  and  with  deliberate  unfairness  attacked 
and  miscriticised  in  the  Saturday  Review  and  the 
Academy — it  would  give  me  infinite  satisfaction  if 
I  could  be  the  means  of  getting  any  modicum  of 
justice  done  through  the  press — a  task  in  which  I 
should  feel  truly  obliged  and  very  grateful  for 
any  furtherance). 


272 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXX 

To  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

February  i$th,  1877. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

By  the  same  post  which  brings  you  this 
note  the  relict  of  the  late  H.  Manners,  Esq.  (At- 
tache to  the  Mesopotamian  Embassy  at  the  time 
of  the  overthrow  of  the  Gladstonian  dynasty  in 
Bulgaria),  will  have  the  honour  of  waiting  on  her 
early  friend  and  patron — a  word  from  whom,  in 
acknowledgment  of  her  safe  arrival,  will  much 
relieve  my  mind. 

I  will  not  trouble  you  or  myself  with  any  "dam- 
nable iteration"  of  my  former  remarks  on  the  con- 
duct of  your  project,  but  I  think  it  as  well  to  give 
you  a  hint  of  the  light  in  which,  after  so  many 
ventures  of  (seemingly)  the  same  kind  have  been 
of  late  years  made,  not  by  gentlemen  and  men  of 
honour  as  well  as  of  letters  but  by  blackguards 
who  feed  on  the  filth  they  make  and  the  droppings 
of  their  own  foul  pens,  any  new  enterprise  of  this 
nature  is  inevitably  liable  to  be  looked  upon  by 
perfectly  unprejudiced  and  honourable  men,  un- 
less and  until  full  proof  is  given  by  the  practical 
conduct  of  it  that  its  conductors  and  contributors 

273 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

are  men  with  whom  a  gentleman  need  be  neither 
afraid  nor  ashamed  to  associate.  A  friend,  who 
(I  must  premise)  writes  of  yourself  personally 
in  a  thoroughly  friendly  tone  and  spirit  and  with- 
out a  word  or  hint  that  could  give  pain  or  offence, 
mentions  that  you  have  been  asking  whether  I 
would  send  you  something  for  a  "comic"  print  a 
la  Hornet  which  you  are  starting;  and  of  course, 
very  naturally  under  the  circumstances,  goes  on 
to  say  that  he  knows  I  shall  not — cannot — dream 
of  connecting  myself  in  any  way  with  such  a  ven- 
ture. And  with  such  a  venture  most  assuredly 
I  should  not  and  could  not  dream  of  connecting 
myself  in  any  way.  But  I  will  not  allow  myself 
to  fear  that  I  run  any  risk  of  such  degradation  by 
giving  my  hand  to  an  old  friend  to  whose  good 
offices  I  am,  and  have  always  been,  glad  and  proud 
to  acknowledge  myself  indebted  for  the  highest 
honour  and  the  purest  happiness  of  my  whole  life 
— that  of  having  been  presented  by  Carl  Blind 
to  Joseph  Mazzini.  In  remembrance  of  which 
occasion  I  am,  and  must  always  be,  as  I  remember 
anything  on  earth, 

My  dear  Purnell, 
Truly  and  most  gratefully  yours, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


274 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

LETTER  CXXXI 
To  MR.  THOMAS  PURNELL 

Holmwood, 

February  2yd,  [1877]. 

MY  DEAR  PURNELL, 

Thanks  for  your  note  which  is  reassur- 
ing so  far.  As  I  told  you  before,  I  have  full  con- 
fidence in  your  good  feeling  and  sense  of  the  right 
thing — but  the  report  implied  (or  so  understood 
— perhaps  misunderstood — by  me,  tho'  by  no  fault 
of  mine)  as  to  the  title,  was  to  say  the  least,  star- 
tling. But  you  should  know  better  than  I,  having 
more  years  experience  how  false  reports  get  about, 
and  that  the  one  sure  way  to  meet  and  suppress 
them  is  to  go  straight  to  the  root  of  the  matter 
and  enquire  at  the  fountain  head  (excuse  the  mix- 
ture of  metaphor,  in  which  I  do  not  usually  in- 
dulge). Having  done  so,  I  am  quite  reassured 
at  your  title — only  it  implies  no  scandalous  con- 
nection with  Royalty,  as  Mrs.  Manners  (who  you 
know  is  something  of  a  prude — as  Balzac  said  of 
George  Sand  !!!!!!)  could  not  think  of  al- 
lowing her  daughters — if  she  had  any — to  be  pre- 
sented at  Marlborough  House  after  the  disclosures 
in  the  Mordaunt  divorce  case  long  ago.  Indeed 
she  has  never  set  foot  there  herself  since  then. 

275 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

You  don't  mention  one  thing  (or  rather  two) 
which  I  am  anxious  to  know — what  is  to  be  the 
shape,  cost,  and  date  of  recurrence — weekly, 
fortnightly,  or  monthly.  Tenth-daily  would  be 
something  new,  and  you  might  call  it  the  Decade 
(French  Revolutionary)  or  the  Tithe  (clerical). 
The  Marlborough  would  not  be  a  bad  name  if  it 
didn't  suggest  to  me  the  old,  old  song  of  Marlbro' 
s'en  va-t-  en  guerre?!  You  must  excuse  the  remi- 
niscence and  believe  me 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

By  this  time  I  dare  say  you  will  have  received 
my  friend  Nichol's  Tables — as  I  told  him  of  your 
friendly  purpose — and  he  responded  in  warm 
terms — saying  he  should  send  them  to  you  direct, 
and  at  once.  I  hope  some  time  this  year — if  the 
gods  are  decently  propitious  he  may  meet  you  (as 
he  wishes)  in  my  chambers  (we  may  all  have 
a  friendly  and  jocund  evening  together). 


276 


(The  following  letters  were  procured  by  the 
Editors  after  the  American  edition  was  electro- 
plated; hence  it  has  been  necessary  to  present  them 
to  the  public  in  this  form.) 


LETTER  I 

To  JOHN  RUSKIN 

22  Dorset  Street. 
Wednesday!  [February  (?)  1862]. 

DEAR  RUSKIN, 

I  am  glad  you  like  my  little  essay,  and 
gladder  to  hear  that  you  think  of  coming  to  look 
me  up.  But  I  do  not  (honestly)  understand  the 
gist  of  what  you  say  about  myself.  What's  the 
matter  with  me  that  I  should  cause  you  sorrow 
or  suggest  the  idea  of  a  ruin?  I  don't  feel  at 
all  ruinous  as  yet.  I  do  feel  awfully  old,  and 
well  may — for  in  April  I  believe  I  shall  be  twenty- 
five,  which  is  "a  horror  to  think  of."  Mais — / 
what  have  I  done  or  said,  to  be  likened  to  such 
terrific  things? 

You  speak  of  not  oeing  able  to  hope  enough  for 
me.  Don't  you  think  we  had  better  leave  hope 
and  faith  to  infants,  adult  or  ungrown?  You  and 
I  and  all  men  will  probably  do  and  endure  what 
we  are  destined  for,  as  well  as  we  can.  I  for  one 
am  quite  content  to  know  this,  without  any  ulterior 
belief  or  conjecture.  I  don't  want  more  praise  and 
success  than  I  deserve,  more  suffering  and  failure 

279 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

than  I  can  avoid;  but  I  take  what  comes  as  well 
and  as  quietly  as  I  can;  and  this  seems  to  me  a 
man's  real  business  and  only  duty.  You  compare 
my  work  to  a  temple  where  the  lizards  have  sup- 
planted the  gods;  I  prefer  an  indubitable  and 
living  lizard  to  a  dead  or  doubtful  god. 

I  recalcitrate  vigorously  against  your  opinion 
of  "Felise,"  which  is  rather  a  favourite  child  of 
mine.  As  to  the  subject,  I  thought  it  clear  enough, 
and  likely  to  recall  to  most  people  a  similar  pas- 
sage of  experience.  A  young  fellow  is  left  alone 
with  a  woman  rather  older,  whom  a  year  since  he 
violently  loved.  Meantime  he  has  been  in  town, 
she  in  the  country;  and  in  the  year's  lapse  they 
have  had  time,  he  to  become  tired  of  her  memory, 
she  to  fall  in  love  with  his.  Surely  I  have  ex- 
pressed this  plainly  and  "cynically"  enough!  Last 
year  I  loved  you,  and  you  were  puzzled,  and  didn't 
love  me — quite.  This  year  (I  perceive)  you  love 
me,  and  I  feel  puzzled,  and  don't  love  you — quite. 
"Sech  is  life,"  as  Mrs.  Gamp  says;  "Deus  vult;  it 
can't  be  helped."  As  to  the  flowers  and  hours, 
they  rhyme  naturally,  being  the  sweetest  and  most 
transient  things  that  exist — when  they  are  sweet. 
And  the  poem,  it  seems  to  me,  is  not  long  enough 
to  explain  what  it  has  to  say. 

Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


280 


APPENDIX 


LETTER  II 

To  SEYMOUR  KiRKUp1 

[Probably  summer  of  1864.] 
[The  first  sheet  of  ithis  letter  is  lost. — EDS.] 

.  .  .  names,  that  the  publisher  of  the  biography 
(a  very  contemptible  cur)  took  fright  and  would 
not  forsooth  allow  them  to  be  duly  analysed.  He 
will  receive  chastisement,  and  the  subject  elucida- 
tion, when  my  commentary  appears,  as  they  both 
respectively  deserve.  Meantime  I  need  not  say 
how  valuable  any  notices,  or  recollections,  or  other 
assistance  which  I  might  owe  to  your  kindness 
would  be  to  me.  My  book  will  at  least  handle 
the  whole  question  of  Blake's  life  and  work  with 
perfect  fearlessness  and  with  thorough  admira- 
tion. I  wish  I  could  send  you  for  inspection  any 
of  the  engraved  and  coloured  Books  of  Prophecy, 
but  unhappily  the  few  copies  now  existing  fetch 
so  many  more  pounds  than  Blake  received  shillings 
for  them  when  alive,  that  only  millionaires  can 

xThe  Barone  Seymour  Kirkup  (1788-1880)  had  been  the 
friend  of  Blake.  He  resided  almost  all  his  life  in  Florence, 
and  was  a  grea*  authority  on  Dante.  Swinburne  went  to  see 
him  in  1864. 

28l 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

afford  to  collect  them,  when  by  any  rare  chance 
they  come  into  the  market.  Some  of  their  effects 
in  colour,  notwithstanding  Blake's  scorn  of  colour- 
ists,  are  so  exquisite  and  inventive  that  Rossetti, 
who  in  common  with  all  great  and  good  artists 
now  among  us  admires  him  at  his  best  almost 
beyond  words,  told  me  once  that  he  regarded  Blake 
as  a  positive  discoverer  of  new  capacities  [and 
po]wers  even  in  mere  executive  colouring. 

Did  you  ever  read  his  great  prose-poem,  The 
Marriage  of  Heaven  and  Hell?  For  profound 
humour  and  subtle  imagination,  not  less  than  for 
lyrical  splendour  and  fervour  of  thought,  it  seems 
to  me  the  greatest  work  of  its  century.  We  all 
envy  you  the  privilege  of  having  known  a  man  so 
great  in  so  many  ways. 

I  don't  know  whether  Rossetti  has  found  time 
to  answer  your  letter  forwarded  through  Reade 
to  me ;  I  know  that  he  received  it  with  the  greatest 
pleasure,  and  expressed  to  me  his  sense  of  your 
kindness.  His  pictures  of  this  year  are  magnifi- 
cent; they  recall  the  greatness,  the  perfect  beauty 
and  luxurious  power,  of  Titian  and  of  Giorgione. 

Excuse  the  length  and  bad  penmanship  of  this 
scrawl,  which  I  trust  may  not  be  indecipherable; 
and  believe  me,  my  dear  Mr.  Kirkup,  with  many 
thanks  Yours  most  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

Seymour  Kirkup,  Esq. 

282 


APPENDIX 

LETTER  III 
To  SEYMOUR  KIRKUP 

22  Dorset  Street, 

Portman  Sq.t 

London,  W. 
Aug.  iitht  [1864]. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  KIRKUP, 

I  cannot  leave  town  again  without  an- 
swering your  letter.  I  wish  you  could  make  it 
convenient  to  pay  at  last  a  flying  visit  to  the  country 
which  after  all  is  originally  your  own.  No  one 
understands  more  than  I  do,  how  difficult  it  must 
be  to  tear  oneself  away  for  a  week  even  from  the 
most  divine  land  and  city  in  the  world.  But  if 
you  came  over  for  a  month  or  so  now  that  you  can 
make  the  journey  in  less  than  a  week,  you  would 
at  all  events  meet  many  who  would  be  glad  of  the 
chance  of  meeting  you,  and  see  where  art  is  now 
among  us. 

I  do  not  add  that  you  would  give  great  pleasure 
to  many,  and  not  least  to  me. 

I  forget  whether  I  told  you  that  your  portrait 
of  my  Mother  as  a  girl  has  been  brought  down  to 
my  Father's  country-house,  and  hangs  now  in  the 
drawing-room,  to  the  delight  of  us  all.  Before 
my  grandmother  died,  it  was  always  kept  by  her, 
and  I  never  saw  it  till  this  year. 

283 


I  was  much  struck  by  the  passage  in  your  last 
letter  to  me,  where  you  speak  of  the  Theory  of 
Transmigration.  Whether  or  not  it  be  affirmed 
or  denied  by  spirits  I  know  that  it  has  always 
appeared  to  me  a  very  probable  article  of  faith. 
I  certainly  do  not  remember  having  been  another 
man  before  my  birth  into  this  present  life,  but  I 
have  often  felt  that  I  have  been  once  upon  a  time 
a  cat,  and  worried  by  a  dog.  I  cannot  see  a  cat 
without  caressing  it,  or  a  dog,  without  feeling  its 
fangs  in  my  flanks. 

I  envy  you  your  experience  of  snakes.  I  should 
like  of  all  things  to  have  them  play  with  me  and 
my  cats.  Notwithstanding  I  have  not  yet  read 
Melusine. 

It  may  interest  you  to  know  that  to-day,  in  the 
sale  of  Lord  Charlemont's 1  library  by  auction 
there  was  sold  a  MS.  of  the  Roman  de  la  Rose 
with  many  beautiful  illuminations,  given  by  the 
poet  Ba'if  to  Charles  IX.,  and  having  also  the  auto- 
graph of  Philippe  Desportes.  It  has  been  a  won- 
derful sale  for  amateurs  and  bibliophiles,  includ- 
ing a  book  with  autograph  notes  by  Milton,  and 
many  early  editions  of  Shakespeare. 

Gilchrist's  Life  of  Blake  is  published  by  Mac- 
millan,  2  vols.  8vo.  I  hope  my  treatise  may  ap- 
pear before  long,2  when  of  course  I  shall  send  it 

1This  was  the  second  Earl  of  Charlemont  (1775-1863). 
*  Swinburne's  William  Blake  did  not  appear  until  1868. 

284 


APPENDIX 

to  you.  What  do  you  think  of  this  dogma  of 
Blake's  (inspired,  as  he  asserts,  not  invented)  ? 
Swedenborg  uttered  no  new  truths,  and  did  utter 
all  the  old  falsehoods.  Because  he  consulted 
Angels,  who  are  ignorant  about  religion;  instead 
of  Devils,  who  hate  religion  and  enjoy  knowledge ; 
whereas  Blake  piques  himself  on  having  received 
no  information — inspiration  from  hell  instead  of 
heaven. 

I  have  not  yet  thanked  you  for  the  present  of 
your  Arthurian  notes,  which  to  me  are  very  valu- 
able, and  full  of  interest.  I  am  glad  to  know  that 
I  may  keep  them  without  robbing  you. 

Did  you  ever  meet  with  that  rare  book  con- 
taining some  of  Blake's  poems  and  headed  by  a 
frontispiece  mainly  designed  (but  not  engraved) 
by  Blake,  A  Father's  Memoirs  of  His  Child,  by  a 
D.  A.  Malkin?  Apart  from  the  interest  of  its 
connection  with  Blake,  it  is  in  my  opinion  the 
most  astonishing  study  of  physiology  I  ever  met 
with.  This  child  died  at  six,  and  left  stories,  maps, 
letters,  etc.,  full  of  invention  and  imagination,  and 
sketches  of  landscape  which  earned  (after  his 
death)  the  approbation  of  Blake.  As  far  as  I 
know,  the  instance  is  unique,  for  it  is  not  a  sample 
of  forcing  but  of  native  and  instinctive  genius. 
Believe  me,  yours  very  faithfully, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

S.  Kirkup,  Esq. 

285 


SWINBURNE'S  LETTERS 


LETTER  IV 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

22a,  Dorset  St. 

Friday   [August  1865]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  was  about  to  write  you  a  word  of 
thanks  for  your  article  *  when  I  received  the  copy 
you  sent  me  this  morning.  Nothing  yet  said  or 
written  about  the  book  has  given  me  nearly  as  much 
pleasure.  Especially  I  have  to  thank  you  for  the 
tone  in  which  you  refer  to  my  regard  for  Landor. 
As  to  the  praise  of  myself,  a  poet  more  drunk  with 
vanity  than  with  wine  could  wish  for  no  more.  I 
only  regret  that  in  justly  attacking  my  Charenton 
you  have  wilfully  misrepresented  its  source.  I 
should  have  bowed  to  the  judicial  sentence  if  in- 
stead of  "Byron  with  a  difference"  you  had  said 
"De  Sade  with  a  difference."  The  poet,  thinker, 
and  man  of  the  world  from  whom  the  theology  of 
my  poem  is  derived  was  a  greater  than  Byron.  He 
indeed,  fatalist  or  not,  saw  to  the  bottom  of  gods 
and  men.  As  to  anything  you  have  fished  (how 
I  say  not)  out  of  Mrs.  Burton  to  the  discredit  of 

1  On  Atalanta  in  Calydon  in  the  Edinburgh  Review. 

286 


APPENDIX 

my  innocence,  how  can  she  who  believes  in  the 
excellence  of  "Richard"  fail  to  disbelieve  in  the 
virtues  of  any  other  man?  En  moi  vous  voyez 
Les  Malheurs  de  la  Vertu;  en  lui  Les  Prosperites 
du  Vice.  In  effect  it  is  not  given  to  all  his  juniors 
to  tenir  tete  a  Burton — but  I  deny  that  his  hospital- 
ity ever  succeeded  in  upsetting  me — as  he  him- 
self on  the  morrow  of  a  latish  seance  admitted  with 
approbation,  allowing  that  he  had  thought  to  get 
me  off  my  legs,  but  my  native  virtue  and  circum- 
spection were  too  much  for  him.  See  now  the 
consequences.  J'etais  vertueux — je  devais  souffrir. 
Accomplis  tes  decrets,  £tre  Supreme! 

Yours  affectionately, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  V 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

22  Dorset  Street, 

Friday  evening 

[Dec.  1865]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

As  I  do  not  doubt  your  kind  intention, 
I  will  only  ask  Why?  Where?  How?  Last 
time  we  met  I  had  been  spending  the  soberest  of 

287 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

evenings  here  before  starting  to  pick  you  up  at  1 1 
o'clock,  which  I  understood  was  the  order  of  the 
day.  You  as  we  returned  seemed  considerably 
infuriated  with  my  unpunctuality — which  I  did 
not  attribute  to  any  influence  of  Bacchus  on  your- 
self. I  am  not  aware  of  having  retorted  by  any 
discourtesy.  As  the  rest  of  the  evening  had  been 
spent,  after  the  few  words  of  civility  that  passed 
between  Mr.  Tennyson  and  me,  in  discussing  Blake 
and  Flaxman  in  the  next  room  with  Palgrave  and 
Lewes,  I  am  at  a  loss  to  guess  what  has  called 
down  such  an  avalanche  of  advice.  I  have  prob- 
ably no  vocation  and  doubtless  no  ambition  for  the 
service  of  Bacchus;  in  proof  of  which  if  you  like 
I  will  undertake  to  repeat  the  conversation  of 
Wednesday  evening  throughout  with  the  accuracy 
of  a  reporter,  as  it  happens  to  be  fixed  in  my 
memory.  I  don't  doubt  your  ability  to  do  like- 
wise, any  more  than  the  friendliness  of  your  feel- 
ing towards  me,  of  which  I  have  proofs  in  plenty. 
Otherwise  I  should  not  care  to  defend  myself 
against  an  admonition  which  if  not  "discourteous" 
is  certainly  not  "common." 

I  remain,  yours  affectionately, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


288 


APPENDIX 


LETTER  VI 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

[April  1866.] 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  got  a  note  yesterday  about  the  dinner, 
and  will  say  my  say  as  I  can.1  Of  course,  I  shall 
blow  a  small  trumpet  before  Hugo.  I  thought 
something  might  be  said  of  the  new  mutual  influ- 
ence of  contemporary  French  and  English  litera- 
ture, e.g.  the  French  studies  of  Arnold  and  the 
English  of  Baudelaire. 

Yours  affly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  This  refers  to  the  Royal  Literary  Fund  Dinner  of  May  2, 
1866,  at  which  Swinburne  made  his  only  public  speech. 


289 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

LETTER  VII 
To  SEYMOUR  KIRKUE 

22a,  Dorset  Street, 

Portman  Square, 

London,  W. 
March  28,  ti868]. 

MY  DEAR  MR.  KIRKUP, 

I  have  waited  long,  but  only  because  I 
was  not  ready  with  the  right  words,  to  answer  your 
letter  about  my  book  on  Blake.  I  was  especially 
desirous  to  know  what  you  would  thinjc  of  it,  and 
sure  that  if  it  [seemed]  to  you  satisfactory,  it  must 
be,  howe[ver]  inadequate,  a  step  in  the  right 
direction].  Hotten — the  publisher  of  my  book 
— intends  to  "issue"  copies  done  by  hand  of  Blake's 
mystic  works  from  the  first  to  the  last.  I  of  course 
encourage  him  in  the  enterprise.  Though  I  doubt 
if  it  will  pay  in  this  "ultima  [Thule?]"  of  damp, 
snow,  rain,  hail  and  all  that  Dante  found  in  the 
nethermost  hell,  i.e.  in  England. 

If,  like  Shakespeare's  Richard  3rd  "I  were  my- 
self alone,"  would  not  I  live  out  my  life  in  Italy? 
But  there  are  ties.  (This  reminds  me  that  my 
Mother  desired,  when  I  wrote,  to  be  "kindly  re- 
membered" to  you — she  was,  and  is  always,  pleased 
by  your  recollection.) 

290 


APPENDIX 

Do  you  know  Dr.  Garth  Wilkinson,1  the  bi- 
ographer [and  translator  of  Swedenborg?  He 
has  written  [to  me]  about  this  essay  on  Blake,  and 
since  [calle]d  on  me,  having  received  an  answer 
to  his  first  note.  It  rather  surprised  me  to  find 
the  most  eminent  disciple  of  Swedenborg  a  convert 
to  the  worship  of  Blake.  (Blake  being  so  very 
heretical  a  Swedenborgian?)  He  says  that  my 
book  has  shown  him  a  quite  new  outlet  of  revela- 
tion.2 .  .  . 

[The  rest  of  this  letter  is  lost.] 


LETTER  VIII 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

Arts  Club, 

Hanover  Square. 

Nov.  gth,  '68. 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

.  .  .     On  my  return  from  Normandy — 
where  I  received  no  letters — I  found  it  waiting 

1Dr.  J.  J.  Garth  Wilkinson  (1812-1899),  the  mystic. 
He  had  edited  Blake's  Songs  of  Innocence  and  Experience 
in  1839. 

2  Garth  Wilkinson  sent  Swinburne  a  collection  of  his  own 
philosophic  poems,  Improvisations  from  the  Spirit,  which  Emer- 
son had  praised.  I  remember  Swinburne's  irreverent  fun  over 
these  verses,  which  he  found  quite  unintelligible,  and  said  should 
have  been  "dictated  to  Blake  by  the  Soul  of  a  Flea." — E.  G. 

291 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

for  me.  I  will  tell  Hotten  to  send  you  Siena.  It 
is  no  end  of  a  work  to  wring  an  instalment  of  my 
money  from  his  "throat  and  maw,"  though  he 
admits  an  outstanding  debt  of  hundreds.  I  have 
met  Mrs.  Burton  lately,  and  found  her  very  well 
and  bright — pleasant  and  friendly  of  course:  but 
I  fear  her  late  family  loss  will  cut  her  up  much. 

Did  any  common  friend  tell  you  of  my  adven- 
tures at  fitretat  last  month,1  when  I  had  to  swim 
between  2  and  3  miles  in  an  equinoctial  sea  for  my 
life,  and  at  last  was  picked  up  by  a  passing  fisher- 
boat?  That  was  a  lark,  and  I  found  place  and 

people  charming.  ^ 

Ever  yours, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 
I  leave  town  for  Holmwood  in  a  day  or  two. 


LETTER  IX 

To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

22af  Dorset  Street. 

Jan.  $th,  [1869]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  find  your  letter  here  on  my  return 
from  your  university  where  I  have  been  spending 

1  For  a  full  narration  of  this  incident,  see  Gosse's  Portraits 
and  Sketches,  pp.  I7'29. 

292 


APPENDIX 

Xmas  among  the  hospitalities  of  King's  College, 
and  have  met  living  men  of  the  great  Keate  epoch 
of  Eton  development — fossils  (how  interesting  to 
the  scientific  student  of  paedosarcotomy!)  of  the 
pre-Hawtrey  period  of  formation.  I  had  never 
seen  Cambridge  before,  and  enjoyed  it  in  the  naked 
beauty  of  a  vacation.  Bendyshe,  my  host,  and 
now  senior  fellow  of  his  college  (tout  pis  for  the 
Galileans — teste  Burton  and  cannibalic  anthro- 
pology in  general)  has  unearthed  in  the  public 
library  an  heirloom  of  no  less  an  anthropologist 
than  Donatien  Alphonse  Frangois,  Marquis  de 
Sade.  A  presentation  copy  of  Aline  et  Valcour — 
"don  de  1'auteur  au  citoyen  La  Loubie,  son  meil- 
leur  ami"  Who  was  this  "best  man"  of  the  author 
of  Justine  is  a  riddle  of  much  moment  to  science. 
Did  you  in  all  your  revolutionary  researches  ever 
come  across  the  name  thus  honoured?  And  did 
he — or  who  did — bequeath  this  pearl  of  great  price 
to  the  favoured  University  of  Cambridge?  .  .  . 
[This  letter  is  mutilated.] 

P.S. — I  will  send  Siena  and  a  photograph  as 
soon  as  I  can  lay  hand  on  either. 


293 


SWINBURNE'S  LETTERS 

LETTER  X 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

The  British  Hotel, 

Cockspur  Street. 

Dec.  zSth,  1870. 

DEAR  MR.  MORLEY, 

I  should  have  answered  your  letter  of 
20  days  since  long  before  but  have  been  for  days 
laid  up  with  influenza  that  held  me  fast  in  bed, 
blind,  deaf,  exuding,  with  eyes  that  could  but 
water  &  hands  that  could  but  blow  the  lamentable 
nose. 

For  the  time  before,  when  I  was  about  &  alive, 
I  was  utterly  occupied  with  my  book, — in  the  last 
agonies  of  childbirth — &  rent  in  twain  between  two 
midwives  or  publishers — as  it  might  be  Mrs. 
Gamp  &  Mrs.  Prig — contending  over  me  prostrate. 
Now — thank  Something — all  that  is  settled,  Mrs. 
Gamp  dismissed  as  (metaphorically)  drunk  &  in- 
capable— &  in  ten  days  I  hope  a  book  if  not  a 
man  "will  be  born  into  the  world."  1 

1  Songs  before  Sunrise  was  published  by  F.  S.  Ellis  early  in 
1871.  But  Hotten  had  put  forward  an  impudent  claim  to 
the  right  of  publishing  not  only  the  volumes  already  under  his 
charge,  but  any  future  work  written  by  Swinburne.  The 
settlement  of  this  claim  delayed  the  appearance  of  the  book, 
and  caused  its  author  a  considerable  amount  of  annoyance. 

294 


APPENDIX 

I  am  ashamed  about  Ford1 — but  could  I  be  sure 
of  three  days'  health  &  leisure  &  spirits  I  would 
send  you  a  study  of  his  &  the  other  Elizabethan's 
relation  to  each  other  (starting  from  a  view  of  his 
special  qualities)  which  should  be  a  decent  piece 
of  work.  A  thing  of  shreds  &  patches  I  couldn't 
write  &  wouldn't  send.  I  thoroughly  admire  & 
agree  with  your  "Byron." 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XI 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

3  Great  James  Street. 

May  12th,  [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  believe  Chatto  has  sent  you  the  proofs2 
as  desired  before  this,  and  I  have  told  him  to  send 
you  as  soon  as  possible  an  early  copy  of  the  cor- 
rected text,  which  he  tells  me  will  be  ready  on 
Friday  (not  for  publication  till  a  week  later,  but 

1  "John  Ford."  The  monograph  first  appeared  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review,  July  1871,  and  was  reprinted  in  Essays  and 
Studies,  1875,  pp.  276-313. 

8  The  "proofs"  of  Bothwell. 

295 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

for  the  reviewers,  to  the  number  of  50  copies) 
that  if  you  make  any  quotation  it  may  not  appear 
with  the  printers'  punctuation  &c.  instead  of  mine. 
I  am  half  blind  and  half  dead  with  correcting  all 
these  proofs  in  a  space  of  four  days.  Was  not  that 
(in  schoolboy  parlance)  a  grind? 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XII 
To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

The  Orchard, 

Niton,  Isle  of  Wight. 

July  12,  [1874]- 

DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

At  the  request  (as  you  will  see  on  reading 
it)  of  the  writer,  I  forward  to  you  this  letter  just 
received  from  Mrs.  Burton  ...  I  hope  the  next 
"bulletin"  will  announce  an  improvement  in  poor 
Burton's  condition;  the  news  startled  as  much  as 
it  pained  me,  who  had  heard  no  rumour  of  his 

illness I  read  your  article  [on  "Bothwell"] 

in  the  Fortnightly  with  pleasure,  but  am  not  pre- 
pared to  admit  the  superfluity  of  the  part  of  Jane 
Gordon,  which  has  been  very  considerably  cur- 

296 


APPENDIX 

tailed  in  order  not  to  make  the  poem  any  longer 
than  was  absolutely  necessary  for  the  development 
of  the  general  design ;  in  which  however  the  total 
omission  of  this  short  part  would  have  made,  I 
think,  a  sensible  gap.  Nor  (like  my  brother 
dramatist,  Sir  Fretful  Plagiary)  can  I  subscribe 
to  your  objection  raised  against  the  parting  men- 
aces of  the  Queen  as  she  embarks.  This  valedic- 
tion was  intended  to  mark  the  close  of  the  last 
serious  personal  passion  or  private  interest  of  the 
heart  in  all  her  life,  and  to  enforce  the  position 
indicated  through  the  poem  which  she  holds  as 
representative  of  the  past — of  monarchy  and 
Catholicism — at  Knox,  the  only  person  then  living 
of  courage  and  intelligence  equal  to  her  own,  is 
in  effect,  beneath  the  outer  shell  of  Protestant 
bigotry,  the  prophet  or  at  least  the  precursor  of 
democracy  and  the  popular  spirit  of  the  future. 
Yours  very  truly, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


297 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 


LETTER  XIII 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

The  Orchard, 

Niton,  Isle  of  Wight. 

Aug.  igth,   [1874]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

Many  thanks  for  your  cheque  and  ac- 
companying letter.  I  am  like  you  enjoying  sea 
and  sun  (though  the  latter  has  been  capricious 
of  late,  and  allowed  such  gusts  &  swells  of  bad 
weather  that  last  week  bathing  off  an  unsafe  shore 
I  could  hardly  regain  it,  &  even  had  I  been 
drowned,  as  I  reflected  on  regaining  land  in  rather 
a  spent  condition,  could  not  have  enjoyed  the 
diversion  of  reading  the  notices  of  my  death  in  the 
papers,  which  is  an  unreasonable  dispensation  of 
an  ungracious  Providence).  As  for  the  sun's  heat 
I  bask  in  it,  swimming  or  sitting;  it  is  never  too 
hot  for  me  in  summer  and  seldom  too  cold  in 
winter ;  what  I  hate  is  the  autumnal  halfway  house, 
brumeux  et  suicidal.  Certainly  I  will  send  you 
copies  of  the  Master's  three  letters  to  me  since  last 
spring  (I  received  another  here  a  week  or  two 
since  in  reply  to  one  in  which  I  told  him  of  my 
design  to  complete  the  history  of  Mary  Stuart) ; 

298 


APPENDIX 

the  first  two  I  have  not  by  me  here.  I  have  just 
written  in  much  perturbation  as  you  will  suppose 
to  Paris  for  an  account  of  his  health,  being  much 
shocked  and  alarmed  by  yesterday's  telegram  of  his 
accident.  I  trust  as  it  seems  he  was  able  to  walk 
home  there  can  be  no  serious  or  dangerous  injury. 
His  man  of  business,  Michaelis,  has  written  to 
ask  an  odd  thing  of  me  as  a  favour — to  write  a 
preface  to  a  forthcoming  novel  of  a  M.  Cadol  * — 
did  you  ever  hear  of  him?  It  is  flattering  to  the 
credit  of  one's  name  in  Paris,  but  otherwise  em- 
barrassing. 

I  am  busy  with  an  elaborate  essay  on  the  poems 
&  plays  of  Chapman  to  be  prefixed  to  a  forthcom- 
ing edition,2  the  first  in  which  the  poems  have  ever 
been  collected;  they  have  (even  more  than  his 
translations)  grievous  faults  &  striking  beauties. 
Also  since  I  came  here  I  have  (for  the  first  time 
I  am  ashamed  to  say)  read  the  Iliad  (Homer's, 
not  Chapman's)  fairly  through  without  stopping 
from  a  to  w:  I  found  it  and  the  sea  keep  time  to- 
gether perfectly  in  my  mind's  ear.  I  have  written 
some  fresh  parcels  of  my  "Tristram  &  Iseult"  and 
hope  to  grapple  with  it  steadily  before  long.  I 

1  Victor  Edouard  Cadol,  born  in   1831,  was  an  abundant 
novelist  and  dramatist.     He  wrote  also  under  the  pseudonym 
of  Paul  de  Margoliers.     The  novel  Swinburne  was  asked  to 
introduce  was  Le  Cheveu  du  Diable. 

2  Edited  by  R.  H.  Shepherd,  and  published  in  3  vols.  in 
1875- 

299 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

shall  look  impatiently  for  the  October  Macmillan. 
Thanks  for  the  promise  as  to  "Les  Quatre  Vents"; 
I  can  but  do  my  best,  but  for  what  I  expect  in  that 
book  I  fear  it  will  be  but  a  beggarly  best.  From 
what  I  hear  it  ought  to  have  at  least  four  articles 
in  each  review,  one  to  each  division. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XIV 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

3  Great  James  Street. 

Mar.  5th,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

Many  thanks  for  your  note  which  ought 
to  have  been  acknowledged  by  return  of  post. 

I  can't  say  to  what  proportions  my  etude  on 
Shakespeare  may  dilate,  but  I  fancy  to  that  of  3 
or  4  consecutive  instalments  in  the  form  of  articles.1 
(I  hope  by  the  by  your  Diderot  progresses,  I  read 
the  too-short  first  article  with  great  interest).  I 
am  still  engaged  on  the  period  where  the  influence 

1 A  Study  of  Shakespeare  did  not  appear  complete  in  volume 
form  until  1880. 

300 


APPENDIX 

of  rhyme  &  the  influence  of  Marlowe  were  fighting 
— or  throwing  dice — for  the  (dramatic)  soul  of 
Shakespeare.  No  one  I  believe  has  yet  noted  how 
long  &  hard  the  fight  or  the  game  was. 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


LETTER  XV 

To  LORD  MORLEY 

3  Great  James  Street. 

Mar.  12th,  [1875]. 

My  DEAR  MORLEY, 

Many  thanks  for  the  cheque  just  received 
&  very  acceptable  as  a  sop  to  Cerberus  in  the  form 
of  duns — would  God  that  Cerberus  had  but 
three  heads!  I  have  sent  the  poem1  to  Virtue  & 
Co.,  but  have  just  remembered  (too  late)  that  the 
MS.  was  without  address  or  signature.  I  presume 
they  must  know  my  hand  &  my  address,  however, 
by  this  time,  &  that  I  shall  have  received  &  re- 
turned the  proof  before  the  Christian  world  is 

1 A  Vision  of  Spring  in  Winter,  which  first  appeared  in  the 
Fortnightly  Review  in  April  1875,  and  was  afterwards  included 
in  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second  Series,  1878. 

301 


SWINBURNE'S    LETTERS 

again  singing  hallelujahs  over  "the  sacrifice  of 
God  to  God's  own  wrath,"  as  Shelley  defines  the 
means  of  the  redemption  of  mankind  in  a  sup- 
pressed verse  of  the  cancelled  edition  of  Laon  & 
Cythna,  of  which  I  have  a  copy  by  me — or  must 
the  printers  be  told  by  letter  where  to  send  the 
proof  &  MS.? 

I  hope  to  be  able  to  send  you  a  fair  instalment 
of  the  "Shakespeare"  in  good  time  for  May.  I 
have  put  aside  for  a  day  or  two  my  direct  work  on 
the  plays  of  the  first  period  to  grapple  with  Mr. 
Spedding's  theory  of  the  authorship  of  Henry 
VIII.  It  is  as  fine  &  subtle  a  piece  of  criticism 
as  it  ought  to  be,  coming  from  the  "champion  edi- 
tor" of  Bacon,  but  I  demur  to  the  conclusion — in- 
evitable if  you  accept  any  part  of  his  premises — 
that  Fletcher  was  the  author  of  the  death-scene  of 
Katherine.  Being  fresh  from  a  first  examination 
of  his  essay,  I  turned  aside  to  analyse  it  (to  answer 
it  as  far  as  I  can)  at  once.  If  you  have  read  his 
essay,  what  do  you  think  of  the  case  he  has  made 
out?  As  you  like  it  best  I  think  I  shall  stick  to 
my  old  title  of  "Three  Stages" — I  don't  quite  like 
"growth." 

Ever  yours  sincerely, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


302 


APPENDIX 


LETTER  XVI 

To  JOSEPH  KNIGHT 

Holmwood, 

Henley-on-T  homes. 

July  Sth,  [1875]. 

MY  DEAR  KNIGHT, 

Not  having  any  stray  song  on  hand  I 
have  just  sat  down  and  thrown  off  the  enclosed. 
I  pique  myself  on  its  moral  tone;  in  an  age  when 
all  other  lyrists,  from  Tennyson  to  Rossetti,  go  in 
(metrically)  for  constancy  and  eternity  of  attach- 
ment and  reunion  in  future  lives,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,  I 
limit  love,  honestly  and  candidly,  to  24  hours ;  and 
quite  enough  too  in  all  conscience. 

When  I  last  took  the  trouble  to  write  a  song 
for  present  use  (it  was  for  Hollingshed's  revival 
of  "The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor"  x)  I  priced  it 
by  advice  of  Sandys,  who  acted  as  common  friend 
on  the  occasion,  at  =£50;  I  don't  expect  to  sell  my 
songs  usually  at  that  rate,  not  being  (thank  Phoe- 
bus) a  Laureate;  but  of  course  you  know  I  can't 

1  Love  laid  his  sleepless  head,  printed  in  The  Examiner, 
Dec.  26,  1874.  Reprinted  in  Poems  and  Ballads,  Second  Series, 
1878,  pp.  133,  134.  The  lines  were  sung  by  Miss  Furtado  at 
a  revival  of  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  produced  at  the 
Gaiety  Theatre,  London,  Dec.  19,  1874. 

303 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

afford  to  give  my  name  and  my  verses  for  nothing. 
I  should  like  of  all  things  to  meet  Sir  C.  Dilke, 
and  especially  under  your  auspices ;  there  are  few 
men  whose  acquaintance  I  should  be  so  glad  to 
make.  But  I  don't  know  when  I  shall  be  in  Lon- 
don again.  At  present  I  am  a  close  prisoner  with 
a  badly  sprained  foot,  and  have  to  work  against 
tides  to  get  my  biographical  and  critical  article  on 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher  for  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica  ready  in  time. 

Yours  ever, 

,  A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

[I  had  sooner  print  the  letter  than  the  poem! 
It's  a  charming  bit,  tho'. — Note  by  Sir  C.  Dilke.] 


LETTER  XVII 
To  LORD  MORLEY 

Holmwood, 
Henley  on  Thames. 

Feb.  is/A,  1876. 

MY  DEAR  MORLEY, 

I  send  herewith  my  poem 1  direct  to 
your  address.    As  to  the  question  of  fee,  you  under- 

1  The  Last  Oracle. 

304 


APPENDIX 

stand  that  I  did  not  like  to  "put  a  price  upon  it" 
myself,  nor  yet  to  address  you  in  the  phrase  of 
Mrs.  Gamp,  with  "Give  it  a  name,  I  beg";  but 
that  though  I  certainly  do  not  (as  I  said  before) 
expect  to  be  paid  for  a  poem  of  this  length  in  pro- 
portion to  what  I  should  get  elsewhere  for  a  poem 
of  12  lines  or  so,  which  would  make  the  cost  of 
the  present  article  a  little  over  £100,  a  sum  which 
you  possibly  might  not  be  disposed  to  offer  for  a 
contribution  not  signed  by  the  hallowed  and  official 
name  of  a  Laureate,  still  I  don't  want  or  can't 
afford  to  sell  the  first  fruits  of  it  for  less  than  what 
may  seem  a  reasonable  advance  on  the  minimum  of 
£10  which  I  receive  for  the  shortest  metrical  con- 
tributions elsewhere,  however  modest  a  multiple  of 
that  minimum  might  be  the  sum  you  might  care  to 
offer  or  I  to  accept.  As  your  note  does  not  "give 
it  a  name,"  and  as  it  is  (alas!)  necessary  to  refer 
to  the  sordid  subject  in  a  world  where  (for  one 
thing)  tradesmen  actually  have  the  audacity  to 
expect  payment  for  goods  which  they  have  the 
honour  of  supplying  to  their  betters,  I  am  obliged, 
before  going  further  in  the  matter,  to  return  to 
this  point  in  the  briefest  and  frankest  terms  I  can 
find;  though  at  the  same  time,  considering  the  re- 
lations in  which  we  stand  to  each  other,  I  see  no 
reason  for  not  sending  you  the  poem  by  the  same 
post  which  takes  this  letter,  instead  of  waiting  to 
send  it  till  I  get  an  answer.  As  I  have  not  made 

305 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

a  second  copy  of  it  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  of  its 
safe  arrival. 

Many  thanks  for  answering  my  query  about 
"Rameau."  I  read  your  remarks  on  it  lately, 
while  the  impression  of  it  was  fresh  on  my  mind 
after  a  first  study,  and  heartily  agreed  with  them 
— except  perhaps  that  I  might  feel  inclined  to 
think  it  would  be  highly  desirable  that  the  dialogue 
should  be  generally  or  universally  circulated  and 
studied  as  a  drastic  remedy  which  might  kill  or 
cure  the  bastard  brood  of  New  Grub  Street,  crea- 
tures "of  no  woman  born,"  but  monstrously  be- 
gotten by  Thersites  on  Trimalchio.  Certainly 
Diderot's  lesson  is  not  out  of  date  in  an  age  and 
country  which  produces  and  maintains  such  phe- 
nomena as  the  World  newspaper. 

If  Browning  did  not  consciously  steal,  and  un- 
consciously and  unconscionably  spoil  in  the  steal- 
ing, the  episode  of  Jules  the  sculptor's  marriage  in 
"Pippa  Passes"  from  the  "Histoire  de  Mme.  de  la 
Pommeraye  et  du  marquis  des  Arcis,"  in  Jacques 
le  Fataliste,  then  all  incredible  coincidences  must 
henceforth  be  held  credible.  The  minute  I  saw 
the  gist  of  Diderot's  story  I  recognised  the  admir- 
able original  of  a  decidedly  unadmirable  copy. 
As  the  work  of  a  slighted  woman's  revenge,  the 
conception  seems  to  me  most  terribly  and  almost 
grandly  natural ;  as  the  device  of  a  male  crew  of 
jealous  rival  artists,  absurdly  false,  and  repulsive 

306 


APPENDIX 

by  reason  of  its  absurdity.  I  am  sure  you  will 
agree  with  me,  but  I  should  like  to  hear  that  you 
did.  I  have  only  seen  the  episodes  from  Jacques 
extracted  in  the  Oeuvres  Choisies  de  Diderot  (ed. 
1874)  which  I  find  to  be  also  oeuvres  chatrees  a  la 
Bowdler,  giving  the  mere  husk  shell  of  "La 
Religeuse"  for  instance. 

I  shall  have  to  invest,  as  I  foresaw,  in  Assezat's 
edition ;  I  bought  this  one  thinking  it  would  give 
the  select  works  but  not  the  garbled  works  of 
Diderot,  and  that  what  it  gave  would  be  given 
entire;  and  there  is  at  least  one  of  Diderot's  works, 
of  which,  having  once  opened  and  instantly  shut 
it  again  before  I  had  read  the  first  page  on  which 
I  lighted  (which  happened  to  be  in  English,  with 
polyglot  accompaniments) ,  I  hope  I  need  not  say 
that  I  did  not  "desire  the  further  acquaintance." 
But  for  all  that  I  cannot  put  up  with  castrations;  I 
say  of  every  book,  what  I  do  not  by  any  means  say 
of  every  author,  "Tout  ou  rien." 

I  have  just  been  correcting  the  proof  of  a  French 
poem  1  ;  I  hope  to  heaven  the  cabalistic  printer's 
signs  which  I  never  feel  sure  about  are  the  same 
(do  you  know  if  they  are?)  in  French  as  in  Eng- 
lish ;  if  not,  God  knows  what  sort  of  "pie"  will  be 
the  result,  unless  my  editor  looks  to  it.  My  last 

1  Nocturne,  first  published  in  La  Republique  des  Lettres, 
February  20,  1876,  and  afterwards  included  in  Poems  and 
Ballads,  Second  Series,  1878,  pp.  79-80. 

307 


SWINBURNE'S   LETTERS 

published  notes  on  Shakespeare  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review  have  procured  me  another  good  thing  be- 
sides the  enmity  of  the  scholiasts  (on  whom  I  am 
writing  a  burlesque  "Report  of  the  proceedings  of 
the  Newest  Shakespeare  Society"),1  in  the  shape 
of  a  gift  from  Mr.  Halliwell-Phillipps  of  his 
splendid  folio  on  matters  connected  with  the  life 
&  work  of  Shakespeare,  with  which  I  have  as  yet 
only  played,  not  grappled,  but  see  much  of  real 
interest  in  it. 

Do  you  see  how  the  Saturday  walks  into  my  poor 
old  friend  Phraxanor?  I  hope  the  critics  gener- 
ally will  follow  rather  in  the  wake  of  the  Athe- 
ncBum  in  this  matter;  I  am  really  anxious  to  get 
some  little  public  recognition  at  last  for  our  oldest 
living  poet. 

Ever  yours, 
A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 

1  Printed  in  the  Examiner,  April  I,  1876,  and  reprinted  in 
A  Study  of  Shakespeare,  1880,  pp.  276-300 


308 


APPENDIX 


LETTER  XVIII 
To  LORD  HOUGHTON 

3  Great  James  Street. 

March  13,  [1876?]. 

MY  DEAR  LORD  HOUGHTON, 

I  shall  be  very  happy  to  accompany  you 
to  lunch  at  Mrs.  Greville's.  .  .  .  On  which  day 
and  at  what  hour  shall  I  call  for  you  in  Clifford 
St.?  If  there  is  a  chance  of  seeing  Mr.  Irving, 
I  shall  be  all  the  more  happy,  as,  having  exchanged 
hospitalities  of  club  and  chambers  with  him  last 
autumn,  I  have  had  occasion  to  find  him  one  of  the 
nicest  fellows  I  have  met  for  a  long  time.  Indeed, 
I  liked  him  so  much  that  I  never  would  go — and 
never  yet  have  been — to  see  him  act  Hamlet. 

Yours  ever, 

A.  C.  SWINBURNE. 


END  OF  VOL.  I. 


309 


o 


